César Cielo tests positive for masking agent

At the Maria Lenk Trophy in May, 4 Brazilian athletes including Olympic and world champion César Cielo tested positive for furosemide, a diuretic banned because it can mask the use of doping products. The Brazilian doping control panel decided that only a warning was necessary because the swimmers have never produced a positive test before and had not intended to cheat. Read SwimmingWorld Magazine.

In a statement on his website translated from Portuguese here on SwimNews.com, Cielo defends himself by arguing that this was a case of cross-contamination.

All data was laid out before the panel and it was proven that the presence of the substance was caused by cross-contamination during the handling of a supplement.

I have always use this supplement and previous controls have never previously presented a problem. Given the trust I have in this supplement, I think this has been an isolated case. Because of the trust placed in the product, other athletes also used the supplement.

The other swimmers tested positive are Nicholas Santos, Henrique Barbosa and Vinicius Waked. Craig Lord isn’t very happy with the inconsistency of treatment of positive testing athletes, read more here on SwimNews.com

According to The Swimmers Circle, the pharmacy that Cielo used is taking full responsibility for the cross-contamination. In their haste to prepare his order, they stopped what they were doing and neglected to practice proper handling and cleaning practices. Nice.