• A new cross border Study has found nine prohibited substances in sports and weight loss supplements available in the US that list Deterenol on the label, a beta-2 agonist that is not approved for human use in the US. ‘Weight loss and sports supplements listing deterenol as an ingredient contained 9 prohibited stimulants and 8 different mixtures of stimulants, with as many as 4 experimental stimulants per product’, it reads. ‘These cocktails of stimulants have never been tested in humans and their safety is unknown’.

• Volleyball player Inese Racina has been provisionally suspended from 16 March after returning an adverse analytical finding (AAF) for meldonium, the Austrian anti-doping legal commission (ÖADR) announced by email. Racina, a member of the Latvian national team, plays for PSVBG Salzburg in Austria’s 1.Bundesliga and returned her AAF on 11 February in Salzburg. Meldonium is produced by Grindex in Latvia, where it is a prescribed medication.

• Rally driver Eros Doria has been sanctioned with a four year ban and rugby union player Riccardo De Leo has been sanctioned with a two year ban, Italy’s national anti-doping agency (NADO Italia) has announced. Doria returned an adverse analytical finding (AAF) for a metabolite of cocaine at the Regional Enduro Championship – Second Test at Mariana di Patti on 11 October 2020, and has been sanctioned with a four year ban. Athletes who return an AAF for a ‘substance of abuse’ such as cocaine can reduce a ban down to three months, but only if they can prove that the context of use occurred outside of competition. Riccardo De Leo, who plays for Top10 club Lyons Piacenza, has been sanctioned with a two year ban, after proving that his AAF was unintentional.

• The Netherlands’ public prosecutor has begun an investigation into match-fixing in darts, it told NOS. A number of Dutch darts players told the broadcaster that they had been approached by match-fixers. In the past year, six of ten reports about suspicious approaches originated from The Netherlands, the Darts Regulatory Authority (DRA) told NOS.

• The International Testing Authority (ITA) will be collecting approximately 3,200 samples from swimmers ahead of the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, a statement from the international swimming federation (FINA) reveals. The ITA has been managing out of competition (OOC) testing for FINA since January 2019.