FIFA ‘alarmed’ at record positive clenbuterol tests in Mexico

According to British newspaper The Telegraph and ESPN, FIFA said it suspected that over half (109) of the 208 athletes tested gave positive samples because they had consumed contaminated meat.

The extraordinary number of positive tests came as a shock to FIFA’s chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak:

“It was highly surprising to see something like this – I had not seen anything like it in my 20 years in this post.”

On receiving the results, the football governing body demanded meat prepared at the athletes’ hotels to be tested during the tournament. Thirty percent of the meat samples taken contained the banned substance.

FIFA reported that the Mexican athletes at the Under-17 World Cup, who had not given any positive samples, had only eaten fish and vegetables during the tournament.

A challenge for WADA
FIFA’s announcement came almost a week after WADA dropped its appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the Mexican Football Federation’s decision not to sanction five Mexican players who tested positive for clenbuterol in June.

Dvorak and representatives from WADA, the Mexican Football Association, and the Mexican government held a joint teleconference earlier this week, where they announced that none of the players who had tested positive to the anabolic agent at the Under-17 World Cup would be prosecuted "because the overwhelming weight of evidence pointed to contamination in meat consumed by players during the tournament".

The meat contamination cases pose a considerable challenge to WADA, which also appealed the Spanish Cycling Federation’s decision to clear Alberto Contador, who was suspended by the International Cycling Union for testing positive to low levels of clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France.
Contador has claimed that his positive test resulted from eating a contaminated steak in Spain.

WADA stated in September that it had no plans to introduce a threshold level for clenbuterol to allow for incidental consumption of the drug through meat products.

Despite withdrawing its appeal against the Mexican senior footballers, WADA also maintained its firm stance on clenbuterol use in a press release on its website, advising athletes to “exercise extreme caution” when dining in countries that might use clenbuterol in livestock farming.

Read the full stories from The Telegraph and ESPN.

Read WADA’s press release here.

Read about FIFA and WADA's teleconference here.