Polish PlusLiga team Łuczniczki Bydgoszcz has announced in its official website that the team’s outside hitter Jakub Rohnka failed a doping test and therefore was temporarily removed from the club’s first team. According to Siatka.org, the player failed a test carried out in January due to the presence of methylhexanamine, a banned stimulant, in his blood.
The team will appeal the test’s results and ask doping authorities to test the athlete’s B-Sample. If the the accusation is indeed confirmed, Rohnka can face up to a 2-year ban from volleyball, although Łuczniczki Bydgoszcz would not be subject to any sanctions, like loss of points, in accordance to PlusLiga’s rules:
“Our regulations do not provide for such a solution, that due to suspicion or the declared use of illegal substances by a particular player, his/her team should suffer consequences in the form of a walkover or financial penalties. There is no such solution, because for eighteen years of Plusliga, these accidents were very rare. Volleyball is such a technical and complex sport that doping just does not make sense.” – PlusLiga’s spokesman, Kamil Składowski, commenting on the case.
The soon-to-be 26-year-old Ronhna is in his second season with the club, which currently occupies the 14th spot in the PlusLiga standings with a 5-14 record.
Methylhexanamine
Methylhexanamine was marketed as an inhaled nasal decongestant from 1944 until it was voluntarily withdrawn from the market in 1983. Since 2006, it has been sold extensively under many names as a stimulant or energy-boosting dietary supplement under the claim that it is similar to certain compounds found in geraniums, but its safety has been questioned, including by USA’s FDA, as a number of adverse events and at least five deaths have been associated with methylhexanamine-containing supplements.
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