Learning the Hard Way About a Banned Ingredient (Published 2013) (2024)

THE stimulant DMAA has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and Major League Baseball. But it is still found in Jack3d and other supplements sold at stores like GNC and the Vitamin Shoppe.

Dimitar Kutrovsky found that out the hard way.

Mr. Kutrovsky came to the United States from Bulgaria in 2006. He had a full athletic scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the tennis team captain and an all-American singles and doubles player. He turned pro after graduation, and in August 2011, exhausted from his travel schedule and the sweltering Texas heat, he visited a GNC store in Austin.

Looking for an energy lift, Mr. Kutrovsky asked the sales clerk for advice, according to an arbitrator’s ruling in an anti-doping proceeding brought against him by the International Tennis Federation. He told the clerk that he was a professional tennis player subject to drug testing. The clerk recommended Jack3d and told him that it was used by a lot of athletes. It was “like a Red Bull but stronger,” he told Mr. Kutrovsky, according to the ruling.

At home, Mr. Kutrovsky compared Jack3d’s ingredients with those banned in Olympic sports. Finding no matches, he began using Jack3d. The arbitrator found that Mr. Kutrovsky did not realize that the stimulant listed on the label — dimethylamylamine, or DMAA — had been banned by many sports associations under another name, methylhexaneamine.

But a month later, International Tennis Federation officials informed him that he had tested positive for DMAA. It has since imposed a 15-month ban. Mr. Kutrovsky has lost all of the points he earned on the tour and dropped out of the rankings. When he resumes his career this summer, he will have to start from scratch. Mr. Kutrovsky declined to comment for this article, but a lawyer for him said his story was not uncommon.

“Top-performing athletes are always looking for an edge, but when they go into a GNC, they are not looking for an illegal edge,” said the lawyer, Paul Greene. “Time and again, banned substances are found in products sold at GNC, and it has become increasingly clear that athletes who shop there put their careers in jeopardy.”

Greg Miller, a spokesman for GNC, said the company did not sell products containing substances banned by federal health regulators. But, he said, each sports league has its own policies on prohibited substances, and athletes need to make sure they understand those rules.

“It is the responsibility of professional athletes to conform to guidelines for use of specific supplements or ingredients that their sports leagues and sports regulatory bodies have put in place,” Mr. Miller wrote in an e-mail last week.

Still, athletes face a minefield when they shop for supplements, said Amy Eichner, special adviser on drugs and supplements at the United States Anti-Doping Agency. She said retailers had, on occasion, sold supplements containing banned substances or prescription drug ingredients not listed on their labels. Her group has developed a program, Supplement 411, on its Web site to help athletes navigate the products.

“It is possible that an athlete can follow every one of these steps and still test positive for a prohibited substance or fall victim to negative health effects,” the Web site says. “The only way for an athlete to completely eliminate the risks associated with dietary supplements is to avoid dietary supplement use altogether.”