Former Carisbrook-Dunedin club cricketer Chris Ware’s two year suspension for an anti-doping violation highlights the need for greater education at all levels of sport.
The left arm pace bowler, who is in his mid-20s, has been suspended by the Sports Tribunal of New Zealand for purchasing a prohibited substance — clenbuterol — from a website in 2014 and 2015. It is the tribunal’s fourth such case and many more similar cases are expected to arise from Medsafe’s investigation of an online steroid supplier, NZ Clenbuterol.
It passed information about the athletes who had purchased prohibited drugs to Drug Free Sport New Zealand.
Earlier this month, Queenstown ice hockey-playing brothers Lachlan and Mitchell Frear were banned for two years for attempting to buy clenbuterol.
Ware, who is now based in the United Kingdom, said he bought the product to shed some weight he had gained when unable to play cricket or attend the gym because of recurring injuries.
"[I’m] just a young guy trying to lose some weight, not a drug cheat looking to cheat [his] way into anything professional", he told the tribunal.
Ware played senior cricket in Dunedin and Oamaru from 2012 to 2016. He also represented Otago at age group level and was a decent strike bowler who bowled at a brisk pace and was often in the wickets.
But Ware has not played first-class cricket or been part of a high-performance programme.
He was provisionally suspended on November 3. Clenbuterol is an anabolic agent and attempting to use it usually carries a four-year ban. But that period can be reduced to two years if the athlete can show the violation was not intentional.
The tribunal accepted Ware’s intention was not to cheat and acknowledged he had received no formal anti-doping education.
His two-year suspension was backdated to January 1, 2017. The tribunal commented because amateur or club athletes did not receive the same level of anti-doping education as elite or professional athletes, it was easier for them to argue they had no intention of breaking anti-doping rules and therefore be treated more favourably than professional athletes. The tribunal has urged clubs and national sports organisations to initiate a greater degree of drug education at all levels of competitive sport. Otago Cricket Association chief executive Mike Coggan said the association would look at what it could do to help educate club cricketers.
"That is something we can start looking at as part of this pilot funding that New Zealand Cricket has given us," he said.
"But we really don’t have jurisdiction over club cricket ... the clubs are almost left to their own devices to sink or swim.
"That is one of the areas we want to get involved in. Down the track there will be opportunities to support the clubs with policy, procedures and education."
NZ Clenbuterol’s owner, Joshua Townshend, was sentenced to two years’ jail in May after pleading guilty to 129 offences under the Medicines Act 1981.
"Townshend put the public’s health at risk by supplying prescription medicines outside the regulatory system," Medsafe compliance manager Derek Fitzgerald told The New Zealand Herald at the time.
