Josh Griffiths Handed Three-Month Ban for Cocaine Metabolite, Belfast Result Voided

British marathon runner Josh Griffiths has been banned for three months after a urine sample from the Belfast City Marathon on 3 May contained benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine. The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced the sanction on 11 November, Athletics Weekly and Canadian Running Magazine report. The 33-year-old has already served the ban, which ran from his provisional suspension on 19 June to September.

What he lost

All of Griffiths’s results from 3 May onward are disqualified and any prize money is forfeited. He had finished fourth in Belfast. He was notified on 19 June, and his B sample confirmed the result in July.

His career is the context. He ran 2:11:28 in Seville in 2022, his personal best, and was the fastest Briton at the 2017 London Marathon at 23. He represented Great Britain at the 2017 and 2022 World Championships and the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The AIU’s finding

Griffiths denies using cocaine and attributes the result to inadvertent contamination from an environmental source he cannot name. The AIU found that he had not established how the substance entered his body. It accepted that any ingestion happened out of competition, before the end of 2 May, and had nothing to do with performance. Cocaine is banned only in competition, which is why the sanction is three months.

His expert witness told the AIU that the low concentration ruled out use in competition and was about seven times lower than recreational use would produce, according to Canadian Running Magazine. The expert said the findings were consistent with drinking coca tea. Griffiths accepted the violation and agreed the sanction without a hearing. Because it was his first offence, the ban was reduced to three months.

UK Anti-Doping and the World Anti-Doping Agency have the right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Athletics Weekly says. Neither source reports that an appeal is planned.