Oxford professor who invented ‘wonder drug’ shocked by 2012 tests on British Olympians

Secret substance ‘mucked around’ with by UK Sport

THE pioneering academic who invented a secret ‘wonder substance’ which was given to 91 top-level British sportspeople across eight Olympic disciplines in the hope of boosting their London 2012 performances, says she had no idea that UK Sport conducted t hat experiment in Olympic year and that she would be startled if the funding body would ‘ muck around’ with elite athletes at such a crucial time.

Professor Kieran Clarke of Oxford University is a respected expert in the effects of diet on energy metabolism and developed ‘DeltaG,’ the ketone drink. It is a synthetic form of a body acid and was being researched in 2012 but was not available to the public.

The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that it was given in drink form during competitions in 2012 to British Olympians, who acted as ‘guinea pigs’ in the study by UK Sport scientists, even though they could not guarantee it would comply with anti-doping rules.

Professor Clarke had been comfortable conducting lab-based trials on rowers and cyclists in 2011, but has told this newspaper she had no idea about the larger study. ‘ I doubt they [UK Sport] would have mucked around with the Olympics,’ she told The Mail on Sunday in May, as this newspaper’s long-term investigation into UK Sport ‘grey area’ practices got closer to establishing the DeltaG trial had happened during Olympic year.

‘I mean they’re not going to give it to somebody fresh going into the Olympics. You just don’t do that because you’ve got no idea [what will happen]. If you don’t know if it works or not, you just do not do that. So I would be very surprised... they wouldn’t have tried it in the Olympics itself because they just wouldn’t do that to athletes.’

UK SPORT’S internal documents confirm they were testing DeltaG with the aim of using it in the period ‘leading into and during London 2012’. British Hockey confirmed some of their athletes used DeltaG in the 2012 Olympic cycle, while British Cycling say some of their cyclists were included in the trials in 2011 and 2012. UK Athletics say some athletes trialled ketones in training but did not use them in competition.

It was only eight days ago that Professor Clarke says she discovered that her product, which was highly secret back in 2011 and 2012, had been used in the big 2012 study, when The MoS provided her with evidence, including the confirmations from those federations and a Bath University PhD, which details the incompetition trials in 2012.

Asked last week about her knowledge of the 2012 in-competition study, Professor Clarke distanced herself again: ‘My role in 2011-12 was as the inventor of the ketone ester and supervisor of small mechanistic studies at Oxford. These studies have been published, as have the preceding safety studies.’

In May, she reiterated that stance. ‘I was just doing research … the money from UK Sport [funded] mechanistic studies, not performance studies. We were just trying to find out how it worked… Ethical approval and anything to do with the Olympics wasn’t anything to do with us.’

Last weekend The Mail on Sunday revealed that UK Sport asked athletes to sign waivers, taking responsibility for any risks as well as non- disclosure agreements promising not to talk about the project. The substance was originally developed for the US Army and, according to UK Sport documents, US Special Forces.

UK Sport are the Government agency responsible for funding Olympic and Paralympic sport in Britain using money from the National Lottery and leading ethics commentators have added to calls last week from politicians and sportspeople for an inquiry into UK Sport’s behaviour in this episode.

‘Apart from the sporting context, there are serious questions of research ethics in play here,’ says Roger Pielke Jnr, a US academic at the University of Colorado, who has researched, written and taught extensively on sports ethics issues. ‘It appears research [by UK Sport in 2012] was used as a cover for what could have been an improper application of an experimental treatment for use outside the experiment.’ UK Sport’s own documents speak of‘ significant performance improvements’ but add that DeltaG is available to UK Sport ‘only for the purpose of “research”.’ The document said all usage ‘has to happen under the umbrella of scientific experiments’.

‘The treatment of individuals for purposes other than research would raise serious questions at any university and research funding agency on both s i des of t he Atlantic,’ said Pielke. ‘This situation calls for a comprehensive inquiry, not just of the behaviour of sports bodies but how university research funded by the US military came to be exploited in the pursuit of medals.’

IT is unknown what performance benefit the trial had at London 2012 as UK Sport has never published any findings. The use of Olympic athletes in the research appears t o be a different approach to one outlined by UK Sport in 2012.

Asked about research, Liz Nicholl, the former chief executive of UK Sport, told a Parliamentary inquiry into Olympic legacy that year: ‘We find that the best approach is not to use the very elite athletes who are r eal l y f ocused on t hei r next competition [in trials].’

The MoS asked UK Sport whether Liz Nicholl knew about the 2012 DeltaG trial; why they had hidden it from Clarke; why results have still never been shared, eight years on; for their views on Clarke’s concerns they ‘ mucked around’ with athletes; and for their response to Roger Pielke’s points about the ethics. UK Sport declined to comment.

But last week UK Sport issued a statement saying: ‘UK Sport does not fund research projects aimed at gi vi ng o ur nat i o nal t e a ms a performance advantage at the expense of athlete welfare. Ketone had been tested since 2008, three years before the UK Sport-funded r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t . UK S p o r t refutes any accusation that Olympians were used as “guinea pigs” and finds this allegation both misleading and offensive.’