The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) sanctioned 63 athletes across 14 sports during the 2015/16 year, its annual report for the year to 30 June 2016 revealed. It carried out a total of 6,022 tests on athletes, which means that 1% of tests resulted in a sanction for an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV). Of those 63 sanctions, 33 sporting bans were publicly disclosed, which are detailed in the table below.

During the year, ASADA fell slightly short of its target to conduct 500 investigations. Of the 492 ‘intelligence incident reports’ it received, 98 were accepted for further analysis and 26 were formally accepted as investigation cases. ASADA said that 299 therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) were accepted during the year in 52 sports, and it met its 12,000 target by delivering 12,437 anti-doping education courses during the course of the year.

The full 206-page report, available here, includes a number of doping cases studies. These include analysis of the two-year sanction issued to race-walker Kim Mottrom in April, which was the first sanction issued anywhere in the world for Dextran. Dextran increases the amount of oxygen carried by blood cells, and can be a masking agent for steroids.

The substance is only banned if it is administered to an athlete intravenously. Scientific testimony showed that the level of dextran found in the athlete’s ‘B’ sample was 26 times higher than the level permitted under the World Anti-Doping Code (the Code). Due to this, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) concluded that no expert accepted that the levels of Dextran found in the sample could have been consumed orally.