What are we to make of the latest justification for a high profile positive doping test?

Of course, we will have to wait for the Olympic 400 metres champion’s case to be properly heard before we can judge whether LaShawn Merritt should henceforth be known as LaShawn DeMerritt.

His excuse this week that his three positive tests between October and January for the banned steroid DHEA were down to him taking an over-the-counter product to enhance his male part may turn out to be true, rather than a cock-and-bull story. Or a load of b****cks.

But aside from the question of whether Merritt is stretching the truth - or whatever else it may be - there is always going to be a problem about his statement on the matter: "To know that I’ve tested positive as a result of the product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around."

"Wrap my hands around..."

In the circumstances, that is an unfortunate image. Did he mean "Get my head around?" Did someone mention Freud?

Aside from the doubtless unwitting but sadly imperishable resonance of that phrase - which is, sadly, likely to accompany Merritt beyond the span of his athletics career - you have to ask: Which lunatic suggested that he released such a statement?

However it turns out, Merritt’s bizarre claim takes its place at a respectable height in the list of Ludicrous Excuses for Positive Doping Tests.

To refresh your memory...

Merritt’s area of exculpation is roughly in the same territory as that cited by the US sprinter Dennis Mitchell after he tested positive for testosterone in 1998. Mitchell claimed his manly levels had been raised to excessive levels the night before his test because he had consumed five beers and made love to his wife four times.

You picture him working out the figures like someone filling in their expenses sheet. Would 10xbeers and 15xSex be too much?

Yes. How about five and four?. Hmm. Looks more convincing...

Mitchell’s story was believed by USA Track and Field - but sadly for him, not by the international athletics federation, which banned him for two years.

Race walker Daniel Plaza also brought in the S-word to his defence, explaining his positive test for the banned steroid nandrolone by saying he had had prolonged oral sex with his pregnant wife, a defence based on the suggestion that pregnant women can produce nandrolone naturally.

Plaza too received a two-year ban, although he was later exonerated.

Sex is not the only excuse-rich zone. There’s also food.

Tennis player Petr Korda, who tested positive for steroids, claimed his levels had been contaminated by eating steroid-fed veal. His defence was undone when experts testified that, to achieve the levels he had, he would have had to have eaten 40 calves a day for 20 years.

Britain’s former sprinter Lenny Paul also used the food line when he tested positive for steroids as a member of the bobsleigh team, claiming that he had eaten contaminated spaghetti bolognaise.



Justin Gatlin (pictured), the 2004 Olympic 100m champion who was subsequently banned for testosterone, maintained that his positive test had come as a result of a masseuse with a grudge who had deliberately used a cream on him that contained banned substances.

The outside interference line was also taken by Ben Johnson - remember him? - in the wake of the 1988 Olympic 100m final which saw him stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for the banned steroid stanozolol. That bad thing, he maintained, had been a result of someone spiking the sarsparilla and ginseng energy drink he took before his race.

Dieter Baumann, Germany’s 1992 Olympic 5000m champion, claimed a positive nandrolone finding in 1999 had come as a result of someone spiking his toothpaste.

But I’m saving the best to last.

In 2004, US cyclist Tyler Hamilton, charged with illegal blood doping, countered that he was a chimera – a person with abnormal genetic cells. "I have a twin that was never born," he said. "That’s why my blood contains a different blood-type than my own."

Back in the 1992, a not particularly well-known British discus thrower and shot putter, Neal Brunning, tested positive for testosterone at the National Indoor Championships in Birmingham. "Don’t bother to test the B sample," the burly Londoner apparently said. "I know what’s in it."

I spoke to Brunning a couple of years later. He was candid. "I did it because I felt others in my event were doing it," he said. "I thought ‘If they can do it and get away with it, then let’s have a go.’"

I am struggling to think of any other track and field athlete, or indeed any other athlete, who has held their hand up as being guilty following a positive test.

Dwain Chambers? You can’t help but like him, but his full confession was partly precipitated by a slip of the tongue he made while giving an interview to the BBC, from which it transpired that he had been taking drugs earlier than the period which led to him incurring his two-year ban. 

As I say, Merritt’s merits have yet to be fully judged. But if things go against him, he might do well to ponder on the words of a South London discus thrower who never remotely reached the world and Olympic levels of performance that he did: "If you are caught you put your hand up," said Brunning. "There’s no point in doing anything else. It just makes you look like a fool."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames