Opinion | CrossFit on drugs would be like Formula One for gym rats: Ricky Garard scandal is warning to the world
CrossFit community collectively shrugs after one of its athletes is caught cheating, and asks questions about testing and PEDs altogether
Crossfitters were surprisingly unsurprised when one of the sport’s top athletes was banned for taking performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).
The community did not specifically think Ricky Garard, third at the 2017 CrossFit Games, was cheating, but suspected there was widespread drug abuse at the top level. CrossFit combines high-intensity workouts with Olympic weightlifting. The winner of the CrossFit Games is labelled the fittest on Earth.
A comment on Garard’s Instagram post about the ban nonchalantly said: “All the top athletes are on something”. Garard tested positive for testolone, and a beta-2 agonist known as endurobol, both anabolic agents. He has been banned until 2021, stripped of his bronze medal and made to repay his prize money.
Garard’s post said he would take responsibility for his actions. He claimed he took the PEDs by accident and his world had fallen apart, but he admitted he pushed the rules and boundaries to the edge and dabbled in ways that could improve his performance, “with no intention whatsoever to cheat”.
Others, he said, were more maliciously motivated: “It’s tough to be on the receiving end when I saw a top athlete at the CrossFit Games intentionally outsmarting the system, getting away with it and ruining the integrity of the sport.”
