In April 2018 World Rugby has reported an anti-doping rule violation against the South African rugby player Unathi Elis Mali after her sample tested positive for the prohibited substances Metandienone and Stanozolol. After notification a provisional suspension was ordered. The Athlete filed a statement in her defence and she was heard for the World Rugby Judicial Committee.
The Athlete admitted the violation, denied the intentional use of the substance and requested for a reduced sanction.
She claimed that the violation was caused by her drinking of contaminated water at a gym in Zwide, Eastern Cape Province, where she had been training shortly before going to Hong Kong. The supplements she had used were tested but analysis revealed no prohibited substances.
She asserted that bodybuilders in the gym were putting substances into the watercontainers from which she got her drinking water at the gym; and that this was the only possible source of the Stanozolol and Metandienone found in her body, as she never ingested either substance anywhere else or in any other circumstances. She argued that she did not know that her conduct in drinking contaminated water constituted an ADRV because she had no idea that it was contaminated with any prohibited substance.
World Rugby contended that the Athlete failed to establish that the source of the prohibited substances was contaminated water from those containers in the gym. Further it pointed to a number of discrepancies in her statements.
The Judicial Committee finds it unlikely that bodybuilders at this gym would have used such a crude and unreliable method as to add steroid-containing supplements to the large, shared water containers. In stating that view, the Committee doesn’t rely on the expert evidence about the insolubility of Stanozolol and the limited solubility of Metandienone. The Committee accepts the Athlete’s explanation of why she did not bring her own water from home, where she has a limited daily supply for her needs there, and that she could not afford to buy bottled water.
The Committee’s primary finding is not that she acted irresponsibly in taking her drinking water from the water containers. The Committee deems that the water in those containers was not contaminated at all in the way she describes. The Committee rejects her explanation of how she came to have these prohibited substances in her body. She failed to offer another explanation and the Committee finds that she has failed to discharge her burden of disproving intentionality.
Therefore the World Rugby Judicial Committee decides on 18 January 2019 to impose a 4 year period of ineligibility on the Athlete starting on the date of the provisional suspension, i.e. on 19 April 2018.