Craig Jones has recently revealed that he has been told about a young gi grappler who has failed a PEDs test, and that fans of the sport may not hear about it for quite a while. The news came after five athletes were handed three-year suspensions from USADA for various reasons, all stemming from failed tests or a refusal to take a test around the IBJJF no gi world championships in 2022. Jones recently filmed a video where he discussed the news that several athletes had failed tests, and he also made the revelation about another unknown athlete as well:
“There’s a lot of potentially positive tests out there that we haven’t heard about yet. One of those, I have it on good authority that a very famous young gi athlete tested positive at gi worlds and he’s elected to go through arbitration to try to settle the positive result he had. I remember when Felipe Pena tested positive he went through arbitration and it took up to two years for us to learn the results of his positive test. So who knows when we’re going to hear about this potential athlete testing positive…”
As he explains, USADA won’t release any information about an athlete failing a test until the case has been concluded and with arbitration it can go on for quite some time. Craig Jones didn’t name the young gi athlete that may have failed a PEDs test, but he did give one clue as to how fans could find out:
“You might be able to speculate who it is by paying attention to who continues to compete in IBJJF events that was a world’s champion in the gi and obviously if they’re absence, you might be able to put two and two together…”
There are were a total of eighteen gold medallists from the 2022 edition of the IBJJF world championship and obviously not all of them could be described as ‘young’ athletes. Along with that, several of them have already competed at other IBJJF events in the time since then as well. Working with that information, there’s only a tiny handful of competitors who Jones could be talking about.
The full video where Craig Jones reviews the news that 5 athletes had been handed 3 year suspensions by USADA and reveals that he knows about another young athlete who may have tested positive recently was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of B-Team Jiu-Jitsu:
