Asinga filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Gatorade and its parent company, Pepsi Co. According to the lawsuit, he is seeking “millions of dollars in lost economic opportunities as well as compensation for the devastating emotional harm he has suffered.”
“The product in question is completely safe and the claims made are false,” a Gatorade spokesperson said in an emailed statement. … Gatorade products are FDA compliant and safe for athletes to consume, which was validated by the findings of the Athletics Integrity Unit investigation.
Had he been eligible, Asinga could have competed for Suriname at the Paris Olympics, and potentially earned millions on a sponsorship deal. Instead, he was banned from the Games and lost his chance to be endorsed. The suspension will also ban him from training or competing with his college teammates at Texas A&M, and despite support from his coaches so far, Asinga believes he could lose his scholarship. Are.
“Either you are guilty or you are not guilty,” Asinga said in a Zoom interview with his lawyers. “I know I’m not, so I have to chase my dream. I have two Olympian parents; I was born to run. “Am I going to destroy my dream because of something I didn’t do, or am I going to keep fighting to the end?”
‘I felt honored when they asked me to get tested’
Asinga grew up in Atlanta, went to St. Louis boarding school, lived for a few years in his mother’s native Zambia, went to high school in Florida and currently attends Texas A&M. He is the son of track and field Olympians: his mother Ngozi competed for Zambia, and his father Tommy once served as a flag bearer for Suriname.
By the summer of 2023, Asinga had become one of the world’s most promising track athletes. That April, he shocked the track world by defeating reigning world champion Noah Lyles with a wind-assisted time of 9.83 seconds in the 100 meters in Florida.
Asinga chose to compete under the flag of Suriname. In a Zoom interview on Wednesday, Tommy began to cry as he described the impact of his son’s suspension on his country.
“I felt like I had more of an opportunity to make a difference by running for Suriname,” Issam Asinga said. “In Suriname, the one thing that is stopping them is facilities. They don’t have anyone who can make that difference. Whatever I do in my track career, I can use it to better this country.
Gatorade named him its 2023 Florida Boys Track & Field Player of the Year and invited him to the July 11 ceremony in Los Angeles. According to the lawsuit, a month before the ceremony, Asinga took a drug test which came back clean.
“I felt honored when they asked me to get tested,” Asinga said. “I was like, ‘Okay, you bet!’ That way I know I’m going somewhere.”
At a gathering the day before the awards ceremony, Gatorade gave Asinga and other athletes a gift bag that contained cherry-flavored Gatorade Recovery gummies. The container was marked “NSF Certified for Sports”. NSF is an independent public health organization.
According to the lawsuit, Asinga’s mother sent Issam’s coach Gerald Phiri a photo of the ingredients label and asked, “Is it OK to eat(?)”
When Ngozi showed him a picture of the Gatorade logo, Phiri replied, “Oh yes, those two are fine. Gatorade does not make products that violate sports regulations.”
According to the lawsuit, for the next two weeks, Asinga took two gummies after his workouts. He was re-tested by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the drug-testing arm of World Athletics, on 18 July.
According to the lawsuit, Asinga stopped taking the gummies on or about July 25. On July 28, Asinga ran the 100 meters in 9.89 seconds at a competition in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This time, the wind was legitimate: he had broken the under-20 world record. AIU tested him again that day and the test of 28 July came back fine.
On August 9, 2023, the AIU informed Asinga that he had failed a July 18 drug test. Picograms of GW1516 were found in his urine. When Asinga received the call, he went down on his knees in shock, he said.
“It was devastating,” Asinga said. “It was the worst day of my life.”
GW1516, known as cardarine, was originally developed as a potential treatment for obesity and alters fat metabolism in the body, according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Its use in food or medicine is illegal. “Athletes should be aware, however, that dietary supplements may be contaminated with this compound,” the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency writes in its handbook.
Asinga and his attorney, Paul Green, who specializes in defending athletes accused of performance-enhancing drug use, compiled a list of foods and supplements he consumed that could be tested for GW1516. Is. These included Gatorade gummies.
“We laughed it off,” Asinga said. “It was the last thing I thought it would source. This brand is something I’ve looked up to my whole life. Gatorade is a part of the game.”
According to the lawsuit, Asinga sent the gummies to the same laboratory. According to the lawsuit, on October 26, 2023, the lab informed AIU that “preliminary findings” concluded that the Gatorade gummies were contaminated with GW1516.
When a company produces a dietary supplement that requires certification, it produces them in numbered lots so that each lot can be tracked in case of contamination. According to federal regulation, he must keep samples of each lot.
As per AIU protocol, Asinga was required to obtain and deposit a sealed bottle of gummies from the same lot: number 22092117150234. He contacted Gatorade to try to obtain a bottle of gummies from the appropriate lot. According to the lawsuit, in late November 2023, a representative for Gatorade messaged Asinga, “Well, very bad news, turns out we have discontinued the gummies, so we don’t have any more! …They may be back but it looks like we have manufacturing issues!’
According to the lawsuit, further testing in a Utah lab not only confirmed GW1516 contamination in the gummies supplied by Asinga; It also showed the same baseline concentration of GW1516 that was found in the drug trial of Asinga. Chemical code matched. The laboratory provided those analytical results to AIU.
According to the AIU’s decision, the lab noted “two unusual aspects”. There was a “large discrepancy in the findings between the two containers of Gatorade Recovery Gummies” and the contamination was present on the surface of the gummy rather than being evenly distributed.
“The laboratory concluded that it was not possible to rule out intentional adulteration of the product after it was opened,” the decision said.
Asinga’s lawyers said this refutes the notion that Asinga might have adulterated the gummies.
“All of them would have been dipped individually in a formula that would have been mixed with water to the tune of a trillionth of a gram,” Green said. “An 18-year-old kid living in a hostel would have had to do this. It’s almost ridiculous that he’s accused of doing this.”
According to the lawsuit, Asinga again contacted Gatorade and requested a sealed bottle from lot 22092117150234.
According to the lawsuit, Gatorade instead sent AIU a bottle of Recovery Gummies from a different lot. According to the lawsuit, that lot was tested by NSF and was accurately labeled.
“They did a bait-and-switch,” said Alexis Chardon, a lawyer who represented Asinga in court. “They said, ‘We don’t have any sealed supplements of the one we gave Issam. But we have this other one. Why don’t you take it?’ He was tested by NSF. And then they let that lie rot.”
“Gatorade fully complied with the Athletics Integrity Unit’s investigation, including the evidence accepted by the AIU that the gummies were not contaminated with a banned substance,” a Gatorade spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
According to the lawsuit, when AIU tested the gummies from that container, the results came back clean. Once the AIU received those tests, it banned Asinga for four years.
“Gatorade created, promoted, and encouraged the false narrative that Issam was given ‘clean’ gummies and that Issam therefore adulterated the gummies it tested,” the lawsuit reads.
attempt to restore reputation
On June 14, less than two weeks after NSF issued its public notice about Gatorade, Asinga got what he hoped would be a breakthrough: an AIU representative called Green and told him Said Gatorade had located and shipped an unsealed bottle from the same location. In the form of a bottle of Asinga’s Recovery Gummies. If that bottle was contaminated with GW1516, it would be critical in overturning Asinga’s suspension.
According to the lawsuit, the tests came back negative.
According to the lawsuit, feeling “confused”, Asinga contacted other athletes at the 2023 awards ceremony and found an athlete who had the same bottle of Recovery Gummies. According to the lawsuit, when that bottle was tested for GW1516, it also came back negative.
“For a while it looked like we dug ourselves in deeper,” Chardon said.
According to the lawsuit, Asinga’s team had another idea: On June 26, they asked her to re-test her original Recovery Gummies. They wondered whether GW1516 had gone unidentified in the previous six months.
According to the lawsuit, on July 5, the results came back: The gummies that had once tested positive now tested negative.
The lawsuit states, “Gatorade’s delay deprived Issam of the possibility of proving contamination in a sealed container in the same quantity that he ingested, allowing him to meet the AIU’s gold standard for showing innocent ingestion of a banned substance.” The possibility of completing the trial was denied.”
“They spent those months looking for specific lot numbers in the field and, once obtained, immediately provided the product to AIU,” Gatorade said in a statement.
Because GW1516 is illegal, very little testing has been done on it, Green said. Green is hoping to conduct laboratory tests that could prove that GW1516 could be unidentified in six months. He hopes to use that finding in an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport later this year.
“One of the first days, I can say I’m actually taking a deep breath and letting it out a little bit,” Ngozi said Wednesday in the lawsuit against Gatorade. “As a parent, it’s very overwhelming. You never in a million years expect your child to be fighting for his character and his integrity because of something he didn’t do.”
In the past month, Asinga had lost his last ray of hope of participating in the Paris Olympics. He remains optimistic that he will run for Texas A&M next year. He cried many times and felt sad. In the winter, he stopped practicing for several days and wondered whether track was worth it. He still believes that he will win.
“It hurts,” Asinga said. “There have been some bad days. Clouds may be above us. But ultimately they have to come clean.”
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