The one month suspension handed out to Canadian Olympian Alec Page after a doping violation at the 2014 Canadian national championship meet was relatively minor; the totality of the punishment, however, was not.
Page will be removed from the 2014 Commonwealth Games and Pan Pac Championships rosters, Swimming Canada said in a statement on Monday afternoon. This is the result of testing positive for Probenecid on April 5th: a banned masking agent (read more here).
“Swimming Canada respects the decision of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport to suspend national team athlete Alec Page for one month due to an anti-doping rule violation,” the statement reads.
Page agreed to accept a one month ban, but as part of that ban he was also stripped of his results from the 2014 National Championship meet. According to the statement: “Because Page voluntarily agreed to the suspension, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code automatically disqualified his results, therefore Page must be removed from the national team for both events.”
According to Swimming Canada, the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sports, which administers doping violations in Canada, “found Page’s degree of fault for the violation low,” resulting in the limited suspension length.
“Anti-doping regulations are in place to ensure a level playing field for all athletes and we are committed to the enforcement and support of the Canadian Anti-Doping Program (CADP),” said Swimming Canada CEO Ahmed El-Awadi. “At the same time, it’s clear Alec did not intend to cheat and that the presence of trace amounts of this substance was inadvertent. A reduced ban was appropriate in this case and allows Alec to continue pursuing his career as one of Canada’s most talented young swimmers. He is a young man of outstanding character and we look forward to him representing Canada again in the future.”
Page’s specialties are the 200 fly and 400 IM, and he would have likely been a part of Canada’s 800 free relay as well.
“I’m very disappointed I will not be able to compete at the Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacific Championships this summer. I understand that there is a consequence associated with the risk of taking supplements. Even after consulting national experts and following the right guidelines, things like this can still happen,” Page said. “Needless to say this has been a difficult time but I am glad this predicament is over now and I can move on to focus on my upcoming races this summer. I love representing Canada and will continue to push forward and keep my focus on the 2016 Olympics in Rio.”
It’s no mystery at all as to how the probenecid got into M. Page’s system. As explained in the newspapers in an interview given by M. Page just after the news came out : a pharmacist prepared citrate caps to buffer lactic acid for M. Page’s personnal use. 30some+ of those caps where eaten per day during the out of competition test so that if probenecid dust was present on each cap the cumulative effect would explain what was found in the urine sample. A client just before M.Page had ordered some probenecid and there was particles all over the place. The pharmacist testified and said he was very sorry for causing all this trouble.
The story is pretty… Read more »
First of all, unlike all the critics above me, I have no need to hide behind fake names to talk about someone you don’t truly know. My name is Guilherme Furtado, a Brazilian former swimmer who gladly made part of the Island swimming group during the year of 2010.
Alec Page was not only my partner at practices, he was also my inspiration and most of all best friend during my stay at Victoria. To explain all this admiration I will start by talking about his personality. Alec is the most dedicated swimmer I’ve ever met. That includes the mighty Cochrane, Hirniak, Cielo, Thiago Pereira and many others. During 7 months of practices I never heard him complaining about… Read more »
The suspension length seems to easy although that being said there are no clear answers as to what wada violations Page has committed and without those answers we will never know how fair the punishment is.
If you knew Alec then you would believe him. He would never knowingly do something like what you’re all accusing him of. He’s been working hard for a long time to go to meets like this. To think that he was using performance enhancing drugs or something to mask those drugs is ridiculous. Alec was seeded well going into both of those meets and it’s quite unfortunate that he had to be removed from the Canadian team roster. He’s going to be a serious contender for finals at the 2016 games in Rio though. Maybe even a medal. I’m calling it now.
The statement itself said there were ‘trace’ amounts of probenecid in his system, and that they found no evidence Page was trying to mask other substances. Its sad to hear his results have been canceled and that he won’t be at Pan PACs. If I was him, I wouldn’t have copped to 1-month and would have fought to keep my place on the team.
Let’s take a moment to look at the facts as opposed to dragging this athlete (and others) through the mud.
1) CCES and WADA are no slouches in handing down sentences. They are based on very strict and thorough investigations. The fact that the athlete voluntarily accepted the sentence and was agreed upon by CCES and WADA speaks volumes. CCES has clearly stated that the athlete had involuntarily taken the substance and that it is in such trace amounts that it is insignificant. However, as a doping agency there still needs to be due process and precedence, thus the athlete (or any for that matter) still needs to handed a ‘punishment’ (imagine the the legal slippery slope that would… Read more »
Finally a few people making sense here. I hate seeing an athlete or anyone judged in public without knowing circumstances and facts. But that is the intelligence level of the few that can be vocal.
As for the the blame – I really hope that the Island Swimming support staff can learn something from this and stand down a bit for the sake of the athletes. There is a swelling body of evidence that supplementation does JACK ALL. If a supplement was that good would it not be banned?
To all the naysayer of Alec Page. Do your homework and read the facts before you judge and show off your ignorant low IQ.
The facts as stated by CCES that trace amounts or probenecid where found in Alec Page’s sample. It is not a performance enhancing drug and found in trace amounts DOES NOT MASK any performance enhancing substance. These medications are common place in the medical system so it’s not a stretch that it could end up in a legal supplement. It’s not the first time nor the last that it will be found in an athlete. Its theoretical use as a masking agent surfaced in the late 1980’s but was never actually used by cheaters on… Read more »
Alec will go to Brazil and do well. He needs to want to complete this goal to be a two time Olympian for himself, no one else. Jealous people are everywhere and he did it two years ago and he will do it again, making the Canadian Olympic team. As a nation, we need to support our athletes. Then men and women are underfunded and with a suspension, they lose their sponsor as well. Money I assume he counts on for rent/mortgage. They put their lives on hold to complete a dream of completing for their country. Seeing their faces at opening ceremonies is amazing and breathtaking. What we don’t see as fans of whatever sport is the hours they… Read more »