Former UFC heavyweight champion, Josh Barnett was given a reprimand but no suspension after taking his anti-doping case with USADA to arbitration. He was previously facing a four year suspension.
Josh Barnett was originally facing a multi-year suspension after testing positive for banned substance Ostarine in December 2016. The UFC’s independent arbitration service, McLaren Global Sport Solutions (MGSS), headed by the author of the WADA report into Russian state doping, Richard McLaren, found Barnett to have only the minimum amount of fault and gave him a reprimand instead of a suspension.
This is the first time a UFC athlete has received a significantly better outcome from arbitration than from USADA. Richard McLaren acted as the arbitrator for Barnett’s case and found that USADA was wrong to count Barnett’s previous 2009 positive test under the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC). McLaren essentially found that as the CSAC test protocols did not meet the standards of the UFC anti-doping policy in several ways, the test shouldn’t count as a previous failure for the purposes of the policy.
McLaren also found that Barnett done everything that could reasonably be expected of him to ensure he didn’t take performance enhancing drugs, and that this should influence his degree of fault. The failed test was found to be caused by a supplement called Tributestin, which lists tribulus terrestris as its only ingredient.
Barnett researched the manufacturer before taking their supplements, researched tributestin, and researched tribulus terrestris. He also kept some of every batch of supplements he took for testing. There was no way for him to know tributestin contained a banned substance without testing it.
In situations like this in the past, such as with Tim Means, USADA have still elected to give six month suspensions. McLaren’s decision to give only a reprimand to Barnett may indicate that USADA should reconsider that particular policy.
Where Barnett did have some fault was in his failure to list every supplement he was taking on his doping control form. Nevertheless, McLaren decided that based on the framework for levels of fault the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) had laid out in Cilic vs ITF, Barnett qualified as falling under the lowest degree of fault for his positive test.
McLaren summed up the facts of the case in an epilogue:
“On the evidence before me, the Applicant is not a drug cheat. He unknowingly ingested a Contaminated Product. In so doing, he did commit an ADPV [Anti-Doping Policy Violation] because he had a Prohibited Substance in his Sample but he did not actively engage in attempting, in any way, to engage in the use of the Prohibited Substance.”