EUGENE, Ore. — Allonzo Trier likely won’t be able to help Arizona chase the Pac-12 regular-season title Saturday at Oregon, while officials prepare an appeal that could at least have him join the Wildcats for the postseason.
An NCAA guideline says even expedited drug-testing appeals still can take up to 48 hours after they are requested. Trier’s case may not be heard until after the Wildcats face the Ducks with a chance to win or tie for the league title.
And once Trier’s appeal is granted, it may not be easy for him to win his unusual case.
Trier was found to have tested positive for a trace amount of Ostarine, a non-steroidal agent that mimics the effects of steroids and testosterone. It’s the same drug that led to Trier’s 19-game PED related suspension last season.
Trier’s attorney, Steve Thompson, told the Star on Friday that Trier is “not a drug cheat and never has been.”
But the fact that Trier tested clean in January 2017 and then failed a random test over a year later is a major obstacle he will have to clear, says David Ferguson, a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Minnesota.
“You have to be careful in making any kind of scientific claim; we don’t want to make the matter worse,” Ferguson said, noting a case could be built to defend either side. “But if someone is clean and then comes up positive again, that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one to swallow as a scientist.”
The inventor of the Ostarine patent himself told the Star Friday that he finds a lot of things about Trier’s case “really confusing.”
University of Michigan School of Pharmacy dean James Dalton, who created a patent for the drug while the chief scientific officer at pharmaceutical firm GTx, said there are likely three scenarios that explain why Trier tested positive again. There could have been an issue with the testing process, the drug could have somehow lodged in Trier’s body — or Trier could still be taking the drug.
“That doesn’t seem likely to me,” Dalton said of that last possibility. “I don’t know this guy, but if I were being suspended from play, the last thing I’d do is keep taking the thing and getting suspended.”
Certainly, Trier’s attorney says that’s not the case. Both Thompson and Trier’s mother, Marcie, have insisted Trier has never done anything wrong. Trier admitted to taking the drug only inadvertently, and Thompson said it was because his stepfather mixed it in a drink.
Trier was recovering from a serious car crash at the time, and Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs) such as Ostarine mimic the effect of steroids and can build lean muscle mass.
Dalton said it was created to help patients with late-stage lung cancer. Tests are being conducted to see if Ostarine can help with breast cancer and urinary incontinence issues, since the drug can strengthen pelvic muscles. It also has been used to treat osteoporosis.
“The drug was originally tested as a way to prevent that loss of muscle and muscle strength in the case of lung cancer and chemotherapy,” Dalton said. “You’re aware when you’re developing it that people can abuse it. That’s certainly not one of the reasons we went down that path.
“We had good medical intentions in line. But it doesn’t take long for the doping community to pick up anything that’s muscle building. It’s been abused now for, oh, 10 years. Lots off stuff out there now. It’s crazy.”
In an interview with the Star on Friday, Thompson said firmly that Trier had no bad intentions.
“The NCAA has found that to be true in the past, and the idea that the reappearance of this drug in his system is somehow creating a competitive advantage and requiring him to be suspended is absurd,” he said. “All the medical evidence suggests that that’s not the case, that he’s not gained any competitive advantage. And they ought to be reasonable about this and process this to allow him to play.”
Dalton said it was puzzling that Trier kept testing positive for the drug in repeated tests from November 2016 to January 2017, since the drug shouldn’t have stuck around long.
“In just about everything I’ve seen, the drug is out of the system after about a week, so it doesn’t make sense to me that he would continue to test positive for months after,” Dalton said. “It suggests one of two things is going on — that it’s retained ... maybe in some other body tissue we’ve never figured out, or that there’s something really going on with the analytical lab. It could be an analytical problem as well.”
The NCAA uses the Drug Free Sport AXIS for its testing program, and Ferguson said the drug-testing firms have experts who are “not going to just haphazardly declare somebody ineligible.”
But Ferguson said it is possible that the drug lingered somehow in Trier’s body and then was released before the last test.
“I think the data’s out there to prove that this could be just a relapse of sorts,” Ferguson said. “There’s probably enough out there to prove it or disprove it. It could have been pulled into a tissue and then released, hidden from metabolism and compartmentalized.
“It would be tough to show some compartmentalization. Maybe there was a cyst and it ruptured. I guess those things are possible. But no doctor’s going to say ‘Yea’ or ‘nay.’
“I just think this guy’s got an uphill battle.”
