» Suspended sprinter’s lawsuit against Gatorade over gummies dismissed

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A New York judge dismissed Issam Asinga’s lawsuit against Gatorade, in which the suspended sprinter alleged the company gave him contaminated gummies at an awards banquet and withheld evidence that could have exonerated him before he received a four-year doping ban.

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In siding with Gatorade’s motion to dismiss Monday, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel did not make a judgment on the suit’s claims. She wrote that Asinga could not sue for liability because he did not suffer a physical injury and that he did not qualify for consumer protection because he did not purchase the gummies.

“The Court understands how unsatisfying this decision will be for Plaintiff,” Seibel wrote in the Southern District of New York. “Taking the allegations in the Amended Complaint as true, he will … be deprived of his athletic career for four years through no fault of his own. Unfortunately, the causes of action he has asserted are not the right fit for the circumstances.”

Asinga can appeal the dismissal. His lawyer, Alexis Chardon, said the 20-year-old strongly disagrees with Seibel’s decision and is weighing his options.

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“[The] decision holds that a young man may be deprived of his athletic career through no fault of his own and be left without even an opportunity to prove his claim against the multinational corporation which he believes carelessly harmed him,” Chardon said.

Asinga sued Gatorade in July, alleging the company gave him “recovery gummies” at an event honuoring him as the high school track and field athlete of the year that were tainted with cardarine, a banned fat metabolizer that has been found to cause cancer in lab animals. After Asinga tested positive, he sent the gummies to a lab that found the gummies contained traces of cardarine. The container, according to internal Gatorade emails included in Asinga’s lawsuit, had been incorrectly labeled certified.

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When Asinga asked Gatorade for another container of gummies from the same lot to be tested, the company told him it could not find one. It instead sent a container from the same “batch” to be tested, according to the lawsuit. When those gummies tested negative for cardarine, the Athletics Integrity Unit, global track and field’s anti-doping agency, handed Asinga a four-year ban that cost him two under-20 world records, a chance to compete for Suriname at the Paris Olympics and his athletic scholarship to Texas A&M.

Gatorade filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in January. It won that motion Monday.

“For over 60 years Gatorade has provided athletes products that are safe for consumption and backed by science,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “We are pleased by the Court’s decision to dismiss the case as there was no merit or evidence to support the claims asserted.”

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“It is important to note that the opinion does not hold that Issam inadequately alleged that the mislabeled Gatorade gummies were contaminated with an illegal substance or that they caused him to fail an anti-doping test and lose his career,” Chardon said. “Instead, the court held that Issam has no way to access justice even if that is so. We think the decision is wrong.”

Asinga remains banned from competition. The Court of Arbitration for Sport has yet to rule on his appeal.

In March, Asinga’s high school coach at Montverde Academy, Gerald Phiri, was suspended by the AIU following an investigation performed alongside the U.S. Anti-Doping agency. The AIU alleged that two other athletes Phiri coached also tested positive for cardarine and that he possessed cardarine as an athlete in 2018 and 2019 as well as meldonium, another banned metabolism drug, in 2024.

From the onset of his case, Asinga has remained steadfast that he never knowingly ingested performance-enhancing drugs.

“I have full faith in Issam and that he’s innocent,” Chardon said. “… We’re still fighting.”

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