Portuguese surfer and 2014 World Junior Champion Vasco Ribeiro has been banned for three years for refusing to provide an out-of-competition anti-doping urine sample. Ribeiro’s defense to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was unusual. In the court records he stated that when a doping control officer showed up unannounced at his home on April 17, 2022, he was suffering anxiety and stress, partly due to taking a mix of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol the night before. Marijuana and cocaine are both prohibited substances according to the World Anti-Doping Agency.
As a result, he contested his decision-making was affected by the substances and after poor advice from his coach refused to provide a sample for the test. He also claimed that due to his ignorance of the doping testing process, he was unaware that refusing to take the test carried a potentially heavier penalty than a positive result.
Ribeiro appealed the decision last year, but this week the CAS confirmed the 29-year-old’s three-year penalty, starting from July 13, 2023, when the first ruling was made, and will include both ISA and WSL events. All results obtained by Ribeiro in surfing competitions since the day of his test refusal will be disqualified. That included a Final he made on the European Qualifying Series at Caparica in 2023.
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Ribeiro’s ban has added to an incredibly small, if you pardon the pun, sample size of surfers being suspended from surfing competitions for drug use.
In 2014, Raoni Monteiro was banned by the WSL for 20 months after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, more commonly known as PEDs. This was despite the ruling body finding his use was "unintentional" and prescribed by a physician.
In 2013 the ISA stripped Australian surfer Mark Richardson of the Gold medal he won in the Master’s division of the 2011 ISA World Championship held at Punta Roca, in El Salvador, following a positive test for THC, the fun component in weed. That felt tough; he was 35, it was two years after he had won and he was done for a spliff whilst competing in Central America.
Before that, you’ll have to go back to 2005, when Neco Padaratz tested positive for anabolic steroids during the 2004 CT event in Hossegor. Padaratz claimed that he had taken the prohibited PED as part of a course of self-treatment for a chronic back injury, but was suspended for two years.
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And finally, we have to go back to the 1980s to find another drug-related suspension. That was an era in which even most of the professional competitors admitted that if testing had been around, there would have been very few surfers left in every heat draw. Australian pro and Pipe Master Robbie Page was however unlucky in that he was caught with a tab of acid by by officials when entering Japan. Page had forgotten the drug was in his wallet after a wild few weeks competing in Europe. If the 66 days spent in a Tokyo prison, 30 of which were spent in solitary confinement, wasn’t enough of a punishment, the ASP (the pre-cursor to the WSL) barred him from competition for 18 months.
Given the historic relationship between drugs and surfing, the above list is almost a scandalously tiny wrap sheet. Surfing’s inclusion in the Olympics and its adherence to the stricter drug testing protocols overseen by WADA will change that in the future.
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