British Paralympic silver medallist Daphne Schrager has been given a two-year ban after testing positive for the banned substance Ligandrol, though a tribunal accepted she did not intentionally take the drug.
The para-cyclist, who won Team GB's first medal at the Paris 2024 Paralympics with silver in the women's C1-3 3000m individual pursuit, tested positive for the selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) during an out-of-competition test last year. Ligandrol is known to selectively build muscle and bone mass.
The National Anti-Doping Panel (NADP) found that Schrager had not knowingly ingested the substance, but ruled she had not proven her claim that it came from inadvertent environmental contamination. Schrager had argued the contamination may have occurred either at a gym where she received a massage or at a shared home address.
The ban has been backdated to 2 June 2025, when she was initially suspended, and will expire on 1 June 2027. That timeframe means Schrager could still compete at the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. However, she has been omitted from the England squad for the Commonwealth Games currently taking place in Glasgow.
None of Schrager's competitive results have been disqualified, as the panel accepted the trace amount — detected at just 0.0006 nanograms — would have provided no performance benefit.
In a statement on Instagram, Schrager insisted she had "never cheated" and described the ban period as "one of the most difficult periods of my life." She paid for independent hair and nail analysis in an effort to identify the source of contamination, but the exact origin could not be conclusively proven under the rules.
"I want to be very clear: I have never cheated, nor have I ever knowingly taken any banned substance," Schrager wrote. "Facing the possibility of a four-year ban unless I could prove that the result was unintentional has been incredibly distressing."
Schrager, who has cerebral palsy, said the impact on her mental health had been "significant and at times overwhelming" but vowed she would return to competition in 2027. She won two gold medals at the Para-cycling Road World Cup in May 2025, just a month before her suspension.
Sources
- https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/articles/cp30y17l074o
