Issamade Asinga was suspended for four years and was left without the junior world record

On July 28, 2023, the world of athletics spoke again -once again- of the appearance of a “new Bolt”. At 18, Issamade Asinga won the South American Championship in São Paulo with a time of 9.89 and set a new junior world record. He also had the absolute best time in South America, which Brazilian Robson da Silva had, since 1988, with 10 seconds.

The Vila Clementina Olympic Center in São Paulo witnessed the new brand established by the boy born on December 29, 2004 in the United States, who is competing for Suriname for his father, Tommy, a three-time Olympian. Issam broke the one he had established on August 2, 2022, in the U20 World Cup in Cali, another that was also considered the “new Bolt”, Letsile Tebogo, now one of the candidates to fight for a medal in the next Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

Less than a year later, Asinga no longer holds the world record because he was stripped of all his victories and times for having tested positive for an anti-doping test carried out a few days before the South American Championship in Brazil. The sprinter had been provisionally suspended and now the Unit for Athletics Integrity (AIU) confirmed the four-year sanction, which began to take effect on August 9, 2023.

The control they carried out on Asinga out of competition was on July 18, 2023, and they found metabolites of GW1516, which, according to the AIU ruling, “modifies the way in which the body metabolizes fat and was originally synthesized and evaluated for the treatment of obesity, diabetes and other disorders caused by metabolic problems, but is now not approved for human use. The AMA has warned of its risks to the health of athletes.”

The sprinter argued that the cause was the contamination of “recovery gummies” given to him at a ceremony on July 10, eight days before doping control, after winning the Gatorade National Boys Track award. However, the Disciplinary Court stated that Asinga “failed to establish that they were the source of the detected GW1516 metabolites.”

“I know I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not going to give up on my dream. It’s simply scandalous to ignore the facts and simply try to distort the narrative against me,” said Asigna, who said he was “devastated” by what he is experiencing and defended himself: “The containers they gave me were later tested in a laboratory accredited by the AMA, which identified that the product they gave me was contaminated with GW1516, the same substance that tested positive in small quantities.”

For his part, David Howman, director of the AIU, explained that “the requirement for an athlete to demonstrate how a prohibited substance entered their body is very simple and this test should not be based on speculation, but on specific and objective evidence. All explanations based on contamination must be thoroughly examined. And this strict review is essential to protect clean athletes and ensure a level playing field.”

As reported by the AIU, “the Disciplinary Court took into account the fact that the Gatorade Recovery Gummies provided in unsealed containers by the athlete for testing contained significantly more GW1516 outside than inside, practically excluding any contamination by raw materials during the manufacturing process”.

“We just want to save Issam’s career, he just wants to get his life back,” Asinga’s lawyer, Paul J. Greene, told The Associated Press. The decision of the Disciplinary Court may be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS).