Interview: Richie Rude Comments on Failed Drug Test
Richie and Jared's cases are both waiting for a hearing date, and there hasn't been an announcement yet as far as a decision or sanctions go. In the meantime, we reached out to Richie to hear his side of the story.
Did you return an adverse analytical finding from the French EWS race?
Richie Rude: Yes. I was notified in July.
Do you know what substance could have caused the AAF?
Richie: No. I tested positive for two substances that are specified, but at the moment we don't know where it came from. So we're getting things tested to figure that out. There were super low amounts of whatever substances were in the test; it was parts per billion.
Have you ever intentionally taken a banned substance?
Richie: No, and I would never take anything. I see myself as a clean athlete and I've never taken anything to cheat, or nothing to better myself.
Do you know the names of the two substances that showed up?
Richie: Yeah, and they're classified as 'Specified Substances.' It was Higenamine and Oxilofrine.
Was this the first time that you've been tested while competing at an Enduro World Series event?
Richie: Yes, this was my first time being tested at an EWS. I've been tested before in downhill, but not in the EWS.
When was that?
Richie: My last downhill race at World Champs in 2013. We had a test there.
Do you know if there have been tests at other EWS races that you weren't called in for?
Richie: I'm not totally sure, but I've talked to a couple of people and I think there have been tests but I'm not 100-percent on that.
How is an EWS athlete supposed to know what substances are banned? Is this something that the EWS communicates to you, or is it your responsibility to figure that out on your own?
Richie: At the moment, it's in our own hands. With having a UCI license, you kinda have to take it into your own hands and make sure that you're looking at the banned substance list. You know, since we haven't really had testing in the EWS, they haven't made it fully aware for us.
I think more people need to look at the WADA list and make sure that there's nothing in any of those supplements or anything like that.
Is the suspicion that these substances would have come from a supplement?
Richie: That's my first guess.
Higenamine is used to treat asthma and is also part of the Beta2 agonist class of drugs. Like all Beta 2s, it's totally banned in and out of competition by WADA. It works by relaxing the muscles that control the airways, letting the lungs take in more oxygen and boost performance. Higenamine is also used as a fat burner in dietary supplements.
Oxilofrine is a stimulant and amphetamine that's known to increase focus and alertness, and it can reduce reaction time by encouraging the body to produce more adrenaline. This has the added benefit of boosting endurance, increasing the oxygenation of the blood, and burning fat. It's banned in-competition.
Both are 'Specified Substances,' a subcategory of prohibited substances that are not necessarily less potent but do leave open the possibility of a reduced sentence through a plausible explanation. WADA says that Specified Substances were introduced: "to recognize that it is possible for a substance to enter an athlete’s body inadvertently," and therefore allow a tribunal more flexibility when making a sanctioning decision.
You're a professional athlete and you're taking supplements that you need to take, but had you taken anything out of the ordinary in the past that you might not have taken otherwise?
Richie's lawyer, Matt Kaiser: We'll need to pass on that one. We have to do our own history and checking of what you did and didn't take, and have everything tested.
Richie, what's the next step for you? What happens now?
Richie: We're waiting to hear back from the French Anti-Doping Agency, waiting to hear their verdict and we'll put in our story of it and tell them how it was fully unintentional and that it was an accident. So we're waiting to hear back from them; it's kinda like a waiting game, obviously.
A lot of waiting, which has to be an extremely frustrating thing right now. I imagine that you're sitting there waiting for the e-mail or phone call...
Richie: Yeah, exactly. You know, it was essentially an accident, and it's kind of hard to wait and see what they'll say. Hopefully, they'll give us some good news.
Speaking of what's going to happen down the road, you probably don't know if you're going to be able to compete in EWS racing next year quite yet. But if you weren't, and the sanction kept you from racing the EWS, would you consider racing World Cup downhill again?
Richie: I definitely would, but it's hard to know at the moment what the French Anti-Doping has power over. But yeah, if that was an option, I think it'd be kind of fun. But you kind of want to respect the sanction.
What do you think this means for the sport of enduro racing?
Richie: I think, honestly, it's kind of a bummer to have something like this come up. I mean, I think it's good that it's an unintentional thing like this and nothing extreme, but it's a good learning experience for everybody. With the UCI coming in next year, I think they'll hopefully open up people's eyes to what could (come) up in tests and hopefully they'll look more closely at what they're taking or what other riders have.
Jared Graves tested positive at the same race; he's your buddy and sometime-training partner... Looking in from the outside, the casual fan might say that it does look suspicious.
Richie: Obviously, it might (look) suspicious but, you know, we are separate racers and I don't think it has too much of a connection. I don't think people should be suspicious of anything.
I know that you can't specify where you think it came from, but the obvious connection that people are going to make is that you're both Ryno Power athletes. What would you say to that?
Richie: Yeah, obviously it doesn't look great for them, but Ryno Power's motto has always been that they have clean substances, and so they shouldn't be brought into this whole situation.
Have you spoken with them at all?
Richie: I actually haven't at all.
Moving forward with your sponsors, with Red Bull and Yeti, do you know how your future might like with them for 2019 and beyond?
Richie: Yeah, I've spoken to both of them; Yeti is super positive and they're behind me on this whole thing. When my contract was coming up with Red Bull, they're behind me and always wanting to keep supporting me. I think even if there's a sanction for next year, there are a lot more opportunities for me besides racing.
You know, I think they both know me enough and that I'd never do anything or take a banned substance or anything like that, so they're definitely behind me on this.
Being a professional athlete like yourself, your whole life is dedicated to going as fast as possible and training - doing all the things you need to do to beat all the people - and now you're in this strange limbo place where you might not be able to race in 2019, or at least not the type of racing that you've trained a lot of your life for. So right now, are you just doing what you need to do regardless, or have you changed things up?
Richie: I've been thinking about that recently. It's hard to know what's going to happen, but I love riding and I love training so I've just continued to do what I usually do. Being with my trainer, Todd [Shumlick, PerformX Training], we filled up my whole lineup for 2019 and I'll continue doing that and having fun like I usually do in the off-season.
Anything else that you want to say to the fans and people out there?
Richie: I hope everybody has my back and believes me, and I think it sucks that this is happening and I'm sorry for that. But I think it'll all come out alright and I hope that they respect that these cases are going on.
We're still waiting to hear back from French Anti-doping and we shouldn't jump to any kind of conclusions, and it's hard to read that on Vital and those kinds of rumors going around. I think you should respect us and that we're not doing anything wrong.
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I don`t know why, or quite almost though, but it was one of the best descents I did on that spot!!!
@gtill9000:
Also - I'd be very doubtful that any athlete is only using supplements or nutritional products from a single provider or company.
His statement that he didn't even talk to them, when the two athletes who failed both share RP as a sponsor is very telling. Athletes have had contracts cancelled and have been sued for implying that tainted supplements lead to a failed doping test, I would imagine that fact plays a greater role in his answer than the idea that maybe he takes a competitor's products.
A few posts later somebody shows the ingredient list and it contains Higenamine. So it seems Graves has been taking this stuff long term.
www.vitalmtb.com/forums/The-Hub,2/EWS-Doping-Thread-Removal,10326?page=5
Or something like that.
Green aka weed = performance enhancing drug. Maybe they were just hanging out with some Norwegian XC Skiers before the race. Never know where these banned substances can come from, ask the Russian Curling team.
Naturally, in order, to make everyone happy, the timeline of the story had to be kept a bit vague. They frame it as new news, while Rude and Graves have presumably known the source of the dope since shortly they were given notice of the AAF.
Thus, the timeline of the details doesn't quite line up. It will later, I'm sure.
It's a bit of a Sharapova-style situation I think, i.e., not checking the banned list often enough.
No need for the tin foil hats (unless you want to speculate how confidential names were leaked to most of the racing community. Then by all means something questionable went down)
It also makes sense that RR and JG made a deliberate decision about when they wanted to go public with what until now was meant to be confidential information. I was just replying to a comment about them only now getting suppliments tested, months after they were notified of the AAF. I might be reading too much in between the lines, but I thought that especially in the Graves interview, his answers imply that he already knows the source of the banned substances. You probably know more details than I do, but it looks like they've decided to keep some of the timeline vague for now.
Basically, don't read into the "timline" as some sort of conspiracy or crafted charade. Patience for facts rather than speculation and opinion would be the best approach here.
All these comments about the lawyer's specialty - no kidding? What good would a contract/property/wills lawyer be in this case? You'd want a lawyer who knows the subject...
The shady part is Graves is using the same one supposedly...
globalsportsadvocates.com/lawyers/matthew-d-kaiser
It happens with Roadies, we should assume it happens within any UCI discipline just as often.
Just to remind you of some facts:
- Higenamine and Oxilofrine (not going into detail about the differences here) have been on the WADA list since 2017 as "Specified Substances" because, in effect, they may have performance enhancing effects, (cf the prohibition of ephedrine since 2004)
- the effect is obviously not comparable to EPO, testosterone or blood doping, but in the end it can be assumed that a performance-enhancing effect can be achieved through better oxygen uptake, vigilance and increased cardiac output. The EWS offers some supertight racing, sometimes 4 seconds up or down decided between 1st and 5th place. And that after 30min of riding!
- What makes these substances particularly attractive for athletes:
* they are easy and cheap to obtain, since they are found as dietary supplements. There is an interesting study where in 14 of 27 samples of dietary supplements oxilofrines (= methylsynephrines) as an ingredient indicate in 14 (52%) cases, the substance was also indoors, entertaining between 0.0003 to 75 mg per dose, the latter actually well over pharmacologically recommended doses is onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dta.1976
* a low health hazard is assumed by the consumers (= athletes/sportsman, who may or may not be bound to anti-doping rules)
* if one gets caught, he can claim it's just contamination, or he may not have noticed the ingredient, or, as Graves in the interview already mentioned - that one might have forgotten to update himself about the list of prohibited substances. A really bad excuse however is claiming it might have gotten in your bloodstream by drinking from someone else's bottle....
* both athletes have confirmed that no doping controls were done in the EWS up until then, the risk of being caught therefore seemed very low
* If one is just caught, one may hope for such a small helper on appropriate indulgence
And now the pinkbike interview with Richie Rude comes into play (www.pinkbike.com/news/interview-richie-rude-comments-on-failed-drug-test.html). A clever lawyer once gave a lecture why he would never talk to the police - youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
- I agree and add: even interviews with sympathetic journalists can be unpleasantly revealing, because:
Richie Rude claims that after failing the doping test in July and dispense with a B probe he did in fact suspect contamination of dietary supplements as the cause, BUT ALTHOUGH his upcoming season and in fact his life as an athlete is at risk and ALTHOUGH he did talk to RedBull and Yeti HE HAS NOT CONTACTED RYNO, his very own sponsor of supplements, up until that day in November.
This lame excuse "we were all so naive in the EWS, thank God, there is now our very harmless case and from next year we will watch all better then better" is just a disgrace. Everybody tries to optimize the very last bit of training, equipment, line choice, etc. and after winning by a tiny margin everyone should ignore the use of some forbidden substance that might just get you that tiny advantage?!
If that evidence isn't enough, what about that (www.nada.at/de/boxnewsshow31-achtung-bei-higenamin-in-nahrungsergaenzungsmitteln) In the first half of 2017 the Australian Anti-Doping Agency (ASADA) has tested 13 Australian athletes in nine different sports tested positive for this very substance. Who would believe that as a professional athlete or coach of that athlete these cases - even more so in one's own home country - all these cases go by unnoticed. Could it be the case someone was just hoping to not ever get tested for doping in the EWS? And if so, that he could get away with it? This someone would not deserve a mild judgment. Seriously, if Rude gets to keep his medals of last season and not face a doping ban this season I have lost all my interest in the EWS. Pinkbike easily has the power to say: "NO we will not publish a single article about the EWS if we do not get answers (and be allowed to publish them) to some very clear questions that remain open 1) 2) 3) ..." Come on, this is not just a joke, it's a disgrace.
ps: I am of course terribly sorry to hear of Jared Graves cancer and wish him the very best for his treatment!), but these 2 things need to be looked at independent from one another.
I've always been a big fan of Richie's, not just because we are from the same hometown. Trying to figure out how I feel about all this.
Ban coffee, cause 800mg of caffiene will make a way bigger difference.
If they tested positive for EPO, AS, or SARMs Id say its legit. Stimulants like these insuch small amounts are a joke.
And Graves deserves to be left out of this bullshit. I hope all Balls $ for selling off EWS helps him feel better about this shite.
So much love for weed, but take an upper and your cheating. Pretty sure Miles and Missy swore that being high made them calmer and faster.
The doping police are out of control and too hyperfocused, cause really they couldnt afford to stay relevant with only busting real effective doping. So they make mountaons out of mole hills.
For example, from bodybuilding.com in their forum about what "supplements" to take and how to combine them:
forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=161239503
Not getting out of breath while riding your bike sounds pretty beneficial to me and the pharmacology reports around it (hightowerpharmacology.blogspot.com/2012/05/pharmacology-of-higenamine.html) suggest it is quite potent, the only limiting factor is that it has a very short half-life in your system.
Of course we all know that nobody will ever come clean if they have doped unless they are absolutely cornered and there is an argument that if you will take one drug to enhace performance it is a slippery slope to the stuff that really works - they are also not tested in the off-season.
It doesnt help that they have both been caught with the same 'drugs' and I suppose reaslistically are both what you would say are the more physical guys out there, when compared to Sam etc
I do agree though that the doping agencies seem to be a law unto themselves and applying the same ultra strict rules to racers in a series that are just not prepared to the same standards as other sports is a bit unfair, there is the argument that they should all know the rules but the banned list is probably exhaustive.
Hopefully they clear up the cases and the world returns to normal, its a bit of a boring one, would have been interesting if they had took EPO and had a vial of testosterone taped to the top-tube.
You've never done Addy on a heavy study day and gone for a ride as a break? It's the bees knees.
So again, the question obviously isn't what's on the WADA list. The question is, what does it take for something to make it onto that WADA list?
If marketing = truth...
Bodybuilding.com is a website selling supplements with a forum so people can hype each other up and buy more supplements.
The stimulamt supplements that really worked have been banned for a decade or more.
- The substance has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance.
- The substance represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete.
- Use of the substance violates the spirit of sport.
They take into account input from industry experts, athletes, doping specialists, scientists, medical professionals etc in order to come to conclusion regarding whether a substance should be on the prohibited list.
As far as the Cannabinoids go, some cannabinoids are on the prohibited list, where is others are not. As of January 1st 2018 Cannabidiol was removed from the prohibited list, yet THC and other cannabinoids remain on the list.
Th average cup of coffee is 60-80mg of caffeine
Either way, this is the ugly end of competitive sports. It isn't nice to be beaten by someone who's consciously been taking substances you've consciously not taken because they're banned. And it sucks to see your career being destroyed because they've found something in your system which you didn't consciously take. Damn, makes me like competitive sports even less.
Ryno-Power's whole business model is making supplements for people that engage in cycling and moto, so it's in their best practice to ensure none of the blame goes anywhere near them.
A great question for this interview would have been, "How effective is Ryno Power?"
"Damn, that shit really works!!" should be immediately followed by, "I wonder if it's legal."
This is a premium, home-page banner, the second largest advertisment spot on the website - is that possible to be an Adsense type showing or Ryno getting in quickly to push their product while the hompage is full of chat about it.
Why lawyers? If you're richie or Jared, just send in whatever stuff you've been taking to be tested, and say "this is what I took and it was supposed to be fine." Call me naive, but this doesn't really seem like there is a need for either of these guys to have a lawyer involved, unless Ryno Power is trying to cover their own ass through them.
It sucks, but you need attorneys to navigate these processes not matter how innocent you are. That's just the world we live in.
I hope I’m wrong but history has a way of repeating itself, especially when top athletes are competing for mere seconds.
Athletes that get tested positive after a full day of EWS racing definitely took something at the beginning of the day and hoped that there would be no drug test or, that the substance would be gone after a full day of EWS racing.
Just look at the video of Rude overtaking Oton in La Thuile in 2016. Oton is one of the top guys and Rude overtakes him on the climb like Oton is a privateer at his first race.
rynopower.com/collections/supplements/products/motivation
"I noticed that when I take this stuff my focus is unreal." - from reviews on their website. Yeh no shit bro. pure Oxilofrine. ha jk
I love RR but guilty or not he is now tainted.
However the fact they're on separate teams but share a lawyer makes me think that Ryno is behind this. Especially since Richie hasn't talked to them? And Graves can't answer a question about ingredients? I could be very wrong in this but I would guess that a lawyer representing a rider in this situation would be from their team, and the only connection these guys have is Ryno, or so it seems. So if Ryno lawyer'ed up for these guys it's almost making me think they know what's going on.
but yeah, these are probly good drugs,...
It baffles me when professional athletes - whose jobs depend on being and staying clean - plead ignorance, time and time again. So you didn't know what you were taking, but WHY didn't you know?! Why didn't you think it was important enough for someone in your position to know? Why didn't your team think it was important enough to inform you and monitor you? If they're all telling the truth about it being accidental, that only means there have been completely failures from top to bottom.
But hope these things can get cleared up as no good for racing
Not much into road racing and I was 3 years old in 1997, but thanks for the list I'll have some casual reading to do today