The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has received a request from Jessica Penne to appeal a second anti-doping rule violation (ADRV), for stanozolol, after the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) fighter released a statement (below) alleging that USADA had ‘bullied and forced me into retiring from MMA [mixed martial arts]’. USADA confirmed an AAF for stanozolol, which Penne argued was at ‘picogram levels’, but argued that that ‘there are many factual inaccuracies and unfounded allegations in her statement’.

View this post on Instagram

To all of my fans and everyone who ever supported me

A post shared by Jessica Penne (@jessicapenne) on Jan 10, 2020 at 11:00am PST

Penne’s February 2019 AAF for stanozolol came shortly after she had returned from an 18 month ban at the end of August 2019. Penne was sanctioned after returning an adverse analytical finding (AAF) for an anabolic steroid. USADA accepted that her AAF was caused by dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which had been recommended to her by her physician. However, Penne did not have a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) and was unsuccessful in attempts to obtain a retroactive TUE.

In the above Instagram post, Penne wrote that she had spent ‘thousands of dollars I didn’t have’ testing medications and supplements ‘most of which were third party certified that the UFC PI [Performance Institute] gave me’. She wrote that Korvalabs, a clinical and anti-doping research laboratory, had identified the source of stanozolol, but argued ‘that was not enough for USADA’. USADA said that it looked forward ‘to the opportunity to present the facts and evidence’ through a full evidentiary hearing.