UFC drug czar discusses Jones’ potential anti-doping failure
“When a WADA accredited lab makes an announcement of a positive test of a substance in that athlete’s body, the substance 99.999-percent of the time is in that athlete’s body.”
Jeff Novitzky, UFC vice president of athlete health and performance, has investigated Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones, Victor Conte and BALCO, Roger Clemens, and Jose Canseco. He was brought into the UFC to be the league’s drug czar, and is doing a commendable job.
On Tuesday there was an impromptu media scrum at the UFC Training Center, and Novitzky discussed the potential anti-doping violation by probably the best pound-for-pound fighter in MMA, Jon Jones.
USADA (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) is the independent administrator of our program and is working very closely with the California Athletic Commission,” said Novitzky, as transcribed by Jeff Cain for MMA Weekly. “They retain jurisdiction over this matter.
The beautiful thing about our program is the UFC is not policing ourselves. That was the reason we went to USADA. The reason that we did that is so our athletes could have trust in the system.”
Jon definitely has one penalty under the system, so the second penalty, if it were to come to that, would basically double the first. For a specified substance, which are your non-steroid substances, those would usually be a year (suspension) the first time. So it would be two years for the second offense. The non-specified (substances), which would include your harder substances: steroids, growth hormones, blood doping products, the first time would be two years and the second time could be a potential four years.
Jon is afforded due process. The B sample wouldn’t have been tested already. But I can tell you this, when a WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] accredited lab makes an announcement of a positive test of a substance in that athlete’s body, the substance 99.999-percent of the time is in that athlete’s body. They do some confirmatory testing on even the A sample.
Novitzky was asked how long it would take to resolve, but declined to cite a number, knowing only that it was too early in the process to tell, and that some cases were resolved in a month, and some took up to a year.
