UFC women’s flyweight Rachael Ostovich is the latest fighter to run afoul of USADA thanks to a tainted supplement. On Thursday, the organization announced via press release that Ostovich had accepted a one-year suspension after testing positive for a number of banned substances, linked back to the supplement in question.
USADA (the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) oversees the UFC’s anti-doping program.
Ostovich, 29, tested positive for “ostarine and GW1516 (also known as GW-501516) metabolites GW1516 sulfone and GW1516 sulfoxide as the result of a urine sample collected out-of-competition on January 3, 2020,” USADA officials revealed. After analysis at a WADA-accredited lab in Salt Lake City, it was found that a supplement Ostovich provided contained the prohibited substances in question. Some were not listed on the label, though at least one was. Ostovich was apparently unaware.
The fighter initially faced a two-year ban from the sport. However, as with other similar cases, USADA deemed a reduction in sanction was justified, due to lack of intent on the fighter’s part. While initially given a one-year ban from competition, Ostovich also received a further four-month credit “due to time served under a provisional suspension in the latter half of 2019 for an atypical finding that was being investigated by USADA and which did not result in a sanction once the 2019 UFC ADP was announced, making her total period of ineligibility eight months.”
That eight-month period will end in August, as the flyweight’s period of ineligibility began January 3, 2020 — the date her positive sample was collected.
Ostovich (4-5) has not fought since suffering a loss to Paige VanZant at UFC Brooklyn in 2019. Just weeks prior, she was victim of a domestic assault by her now-former husband, fellow MMA fighter Arnold Berdon. She had been linked to a fight with Shana Dobson at UFC Auckland earlier this year, but withdrew for undisclosed reasons at the time.
