Disgraced Hungarian discus thrower sues Canadian company over London 2012 drugs failure

By Duncan Mackay

April 7 – Disgraced Hungarian discus thrower Robert Fazekas has launched legal action against a Canadian supplement company, claiming that one of its products contained banned anabolic steroids which led to him being thrown out of last year’s Olympics in London.

A lawsuit has been filed by Fazekas and his coach, Adrian Annus, against MVP Biotech, the Buffalo News reported today.

The lawsuit has been filed in the United States because the company’s distribution address is in Niagara Falls, but it is actually based in Kirkland, Quebec.

Fazekas’s attorney, Kalman Magyar, claims that they believe the 37-year-old would have won the Olympic gold medal at London 2012 if he had not tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid Stanozolol two weeks before the start of the Games, which led to him being suspended and unable to take part.

“During training right before the Olympics, which he was not allowed to go to in the end, he threw a longer throw than the eventual gold medalist in London [Germany’s Robert Harting],” Magyar told the Buffalo News.

“We surely believe he was greatly harmed here.

“He’s never tested positive for steroids until he came across MVP’s products.”

But Fazekas had been stripped of the Athens 2004 Olympic discus gold medal and banned for two years after he failed to provide enough of a urine sample after the competition.

He provided testers with only 25 millilitres of urine, 50ml short of the required amount, claiming that he was “in an unstable psychological state and feeling unwell”.

Fazekas turned down the testers request to accompany him back to the Olympic Village, despite being warned that he would be disqualified and stripped of his medal.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) later rejected his defence that he was a deeply religious person and had difficulty urinating in front of other people.

Annus, meanwhile, was also stripped of the gold medal he had won in the hammer after his urine samples – taken before and after competition – showed evidence of belonging to different people, therefore indicating tampering.

“text-align: left;”>The IOC also attempted to test Annus shortly after his competition in Athens, but he refused the test.

Fazekas alleges in his lawsuit that the steroids he tested positive for before London 2012 were contained in “Pro Whey”, a protein supplement sold by MVP Biotech.

It was “one nanogram per milliliter, the tiniest amount possible,” Magyar told the Buffalo News.

Samples of the supplements Fazekas was taking, including opened and unopened containers of Pro Whey, both tested positive for steroids, according to Magyar.

The lawsuit accuses MVP Biotech of failing to list the steroid in question among Pro Whey’s ingredients.

“That is a prohibited substance,” Magyar told the Buffalo News.

“He never would have taken it if it was [listed].”

Contact the writer of this story at duncan.mackay@insidethegames.biz