Brazilian Paralympian Patricia Pereira dos Santos has been banned for 12 months after an anti-doping rules violation, the International Paralympic Committee announced on Tuesday. In addition to the suspension, she is being stripped of a silver and bronze medal that she earned at the 2019 Parapan American Games.
At those Games, she tested positive for the banned substances hydrochlorothiazide and Ligandrol. The former is a masking agent and the latter is classified as a category S1.2 – Other Anabolic Agent under the World Anti-Doping Code. The suspension began on August 21st, the date of the test, and runs through August 20th, 2020. The suspension is due to end 5 days before the original start date of the Paralympic Games before they were postponed to 2021.
An analysis by a WADA-accredited lab of supplements that Pereira was taken revealed that they were contaminated with the substances that Pereira tested positive for. This contamination resulted in the an agreement between the IPC and the athlete to a reduced 12-month sanction. The maximum penalty would have been 4 years for a first-time offense.
Pereira won silver in the 50 free and bronze in the 100 free, both in the S5 class, at the 2019 Parapan American Games – an event for Para-athletes that runs in conjunction with the Pan American Games. In both cases, those who finished below her have been bumped a spot in the official results.
Her countrymate Esthefany de Oliveira is the primary benefactor: in both events, she finished in 4th place, and now has bronze medals. Oliveira already had 4 medals at the meet, including bronze in the 200 free (S5), silver in the 100 breast (SB5), silver in the 50 fly (S5), and gold in the 200 IM (SM5).
Athletes who earned new medals:
- Argentina’s Ana Noriega promotes from bronze to silver in the 50 free (S5)
- Brazil’s Esthefany de Oliveira promotes from 4th to a bronze medal in the 50 free (S5)
- Brazil’s Esthefany de Oliveira promotes from 4th to a bronze medal in the 100 free (S5).
Pereira was a soccer player in her youth before spinal cord injuries pushed her into swimming. She represented Brazil at the 2016 Paralympic Games but did not medal. She did earn a silver medal in the S4 100 freestyle at the 2017 World Para Swimming Championships.
This steady drumbeat will continue unabated until there are lifetime bans and criminal prosecution of the athletes and coaches who encourage and enable this behavior.
If you’re serving a suspension that would originally not allow you to compete at this Olympics, you shouldn’t be allowed to compete at it’s delayed date. They shouldnt profit from a pandemic.
I would agree if the supplements were knowingly laced and intentionally taken for her benefit. The article implies that she was ignorant to the substances in the “supplements” however this is also Brazil…and why would a masking agent be in a “supplement” if not to serve a purpose?…to mask the banned substance. I wish WADA would also publish the maker of the “supplement” that had been contaminated for educational purposes.
Her suspension was actually due to end 5 days before the original Paralympics were to begin. So it’s the qualifying, not the actual competition at the Paralympics, that she was due to miss.
Should be more.
It’s actually substantially more than USADA has given for similar and recent proven tainted supplement defenses.
Hi Braden – since supplements leading to suspensions has been a hot topic for a while, has SwimSwam posted articles in the past that explain how supplements elite athletes use can become “contaminated”? I can’t recall if you have, but if you have, I believe a link to previous article(s) explaining the science would be awesome. I’m just a layman and would like to know how mass-produced supplements could become contaminated with masking agents and/or anabolic agents.
I would also like to read more information on this subject.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5753965/