Top competitor Felipe Costa has just been stripped of his IBJJF No Gi World Championship title and handed a one year ban after testing positive for Clomiphene. Costa actually had the best year of his career so far in 2024, with his first major achievement coming at ADCC 2024. He went 3-1 in the under 88kg division there and won a bronze medal on his promotional debut, but he won his furst world title just a few months later. That was when he beat four tough opponents in order to win a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the IBJJF No Gi World Championship 2024.
That also happens to be one of the handful of events that are actually tested for PEDs and other banned substances, so Costa was subject to testing after winning the title. Niw that the results of that testing has come in, USADA have announced that Costa tested positive for a banned substance. Clomiphene is not strictly-speaking a PED, it’s actually a female fertility drug that can be used to mask the effects of anabolic steroid use. USADA also confirmed that ‘the substance was taken at the direction of a physician’, but Costa did not meet the criteria for a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).
That’s why Costa has been handed a one-year suspension from IBJJF competition that will apply retroactively starting from the date his provisional suspension began on December 30th, 2024. That means he will miss all IBJJF events in 2025 and he’s also been stripped of his first world title, with that accolade now being given to the former silver medalist instead. Although the IBJJF haven’t confirmed that officially yet, that is the standard practice they’ve applied in every other incident like this. That means that Faris Ben-lamkadem will be promoted to the heavyweight no gi world champion for 2024, and the silver medal will go to Calon Sabino instead.
