Athletes have been warned of one-night stands to avoid the risk of failing drug tests. The fear is that they could be contaminated with banned drugs.

The warning was issued at a high-profile anti-doping summit, where leading sports lawyers and experts underlined a growing trend of athletes being caught in doping scandals due to casual sex, particularly in the Tinder generation.

Mark Hovell, a leading sports lawyer and the independent chair in the Jannik Sinner anti-doping case, brought to the fore the issue of French tennis player Richard Gasquet, who was let off despite testing for cocaine after it came to light that he was contaminated from kissing a woman in a nightclub.

“Gasquet managed to get her to come and give evidence to say: ‘Yes, I’m a cocaine addict. I use cocaine,’” Hovell added. “‘I kissed him in this nightclub.’ But with a one-night stand, how are you going to be able to find that person again? That’s the problem.”

When moderator Jacqui Oatley asked if athletes needed to at least get a phone number to protect themselves, Hovell said: “They might not have the evidence they need.”

Travis Tygart, another panelist who heads the US Anti-Doping Agency, echoed Hovell's assessment and cited the case of the American boxer Virginia Fuchs in 2020.

Fuchs tested positive for prohibited substances, but was later cleared after he proved that the metabolites detected in her sample were consistent with recent exposure via sexual transmission with her male partner.

“I think based on the cases we’ve seen, watch who you kiss and watch out who you have an intimate relationship with,” Tygart told the Sports Resolutions conference.

Tygart also raised the issue that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) should raise the minimum level of substances that could be sexually transmitted, such as clostebol and ostarine, to avoid a ban.

“I think it’s a pretty ridiculous world we are expecting our athletes to live in, which is why we are pushing to try to change these rules to make it more reasonable and fair,” said Tygart.

“The onus is always on the athletes – we, as anti-doping organisations, need to take some of that responsibility back. And I worry how many of the intentional cheats are actually getting away because we’re spending so much time and resources on the cases that end up being someone kissing someone at a bar,” he added.

Tygart also raised the issue of 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned drug TMZ before later being cleared by WADA.

The USADA had said that the 96 medals at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics could have potentially been affected by the cases, and that WADA had a responsibility to clean athletes to do more.

“It has basically been a year since China’s failure to follow the rules that resulted in no consequences,” Tygart said. “And you run the numbers from the 2021 Summer Olympics and the 2024 Summer Olympics in swimming, and potentially 96 medals have been impacted by those swimmers who had, 23 swimmers who had positive tests.

“And arguably, they should have gotten four years. TMZ is in the category of four years unless they prove source and no intent. And unfortunately, the system, for whatever reason, is not willing to get to the bottom of it in a real and meaningful way,” he added.

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