USADA Continuing To Investigate Alberto Salazar's Use Of L-carnitine

USADA Continuing To Investigate Alberto Salazar's Use Of L-carnitine

USADA Continuing To Investigate Alberto Salazar's Use Of L-carnitine

Feb 26, 2017 by Dennis Young
USADA Continuing To Investigate Alberto Salazar's Use Of L-carnitine
Britain's ​Sunday Times ​has a report out tonight based on a leaked USADA document. The report centers around the Oregon Project's use of L-carnitine, a legal substance. The story says that "USADA believes the L-carnitine infusions given by intravenous drip to six top American runners training with Salazar 'almost certainly' broke anti-doping rules. L-carnitine is not a banned substance for athletes but infusions of more than 50ml in the space of six hours are prohibited."​

The only rules violation in taking a legal substance, then, would be injecting more than 50 mL of it in a six-hour time period. According to the ​Times​, the USADA report was completed in March 2016, but was never published publicly. A draft of these documents was apparently leaked to the times by Fancy Bears, a Russian government-backed hacking group.

USADA confirmed the authenticity of the report in a statement, saying that it wrote the report in response to a request from a medical licensing body that was investigating an unnamed doctor.