World number one Jannik Sinner has tested positive for an illegal steroid.
But he is not banned – after he was judged to have been doped unconsciously.
Same medicine as Johaug
The steroid tested positive after the Indian Wells match was clostebol, the same steroid that cross-country skier Therese Johaug tested positive for in 2016, and was suspended for. Both Johaug and Sinner had ingested it via the drug trofodermin, but Johaug via an ointment and Sinner via a spray.
When Sandrén-Sandberg hears about the explanation for the test (that his physiotherapist used a spray with clostebol in it), he is surprised.
– I have never heard of that, that clostebol would be available in spray form, he says, but later explains that it is not impossible that it happened as they say:
– It has been proven that it is possible to transfer it from the skin of one person to another.
“Is theoretically possible”
The amount of clostebol found in Sinner’s urine test (121pg/mL) is also low, as would be the case if a person transferred it through body-to-body contact.
– It is theoretically possible, but it is far-fetched.
Åke Andrén-Sandberg describes the amount of clostebol in Sinner’s test as “incredibly small”, and something that did not automatically give Sinner any positive effect.
– The dose he had in his urine on these occasions, it had no effect. But he is the one who says that it has happened in these ways. It is as we said when we talked about Therese Johaug: The small amount she had in her urine on the occasion in question was so small that it was not significant, but it could just as well have been the case that four months earlier she had received a giant dose which had great effect, he says.