By Jon Roe
A University of Calgary Dinos football player has been removed from the team and deemed ineligible for play in Canadian Interuniversity Sport for two years after a positive doping test. Linebacker Duncan McLean tested positive for Oxymetholone metabolites, an anabolic steroid on the 2009 World Anti-Doping Agency Prohibited List, following an out-of-competition urine test March 20.
McLean completed his third-year with the Dinos in 2008, playing in seven regular season and two playoff games.
“The University of Calgary is unequivocally opposed to the use of banned substances by our student-athletes,” said Dinos Director of Athletics Kevin Boyles in a Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport press release May 27. “We have a zero-tolerance policy both at the U of C and in CIS. We are fully supportive of the Canadian Anti-Doping Program and hope that this unfortunate situation sends a strong message throughout the league.”
Drug and doping testing varies by sport in the CIS. Because of cost, the CIS focuses their resources where there’s strong concern there will be doping. Hockey and football players are tested more than other athletes. Football players are commonly tested five or six times a year, Boyles told the Gauntlet.
All CIS athletes can be tested 365 days a year, any day, both in season and out of competition, and up to 18 months after they finish their CIS career. Testing is done randomly and via a sample of players.
McLean’s violation ends his CIS career. He will be suspended for his two remaining years of eligibility, but will be allowed to continue pursuing his degree at the U of C, Boyles said.
“We’re always concerned and this just reminds us we need to continue to be very diligent with our education process,” he added. “We’re stepping up our efforts with providing our athletes with tested and screened supplement alternatives that we know are clean and that we know they can take. … We need to put those efforts in to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But at the end of the day, each individual athlete is in control of what they put into their bodies, you just can’t prevent it from happening if they make that bad decision.”