Weight loss wonder drugs Ozempic and Wegovy could be banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prior to the Los Angeles Olympic Games, as concern over athletes abusing anti-obesity drugs grows.
That’s if sport’s global drugs watchdog collects enough evidence of abuse among athletes prior to the 2028 Games, which some are already labeling the ‘Ozempic Olympics.’
Weight management drugs, or GLP-1 agonist semaglutides, have been on WADA’s monitoring list since 2024 and have been become a hot topic of conversation among athletes competing in sports such as triathlon and cycling.
There’s been plenty of debate and speculation about the dramatic weight loss of certain athletes, with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s transformation, prior to her success in this year’s Tour de France Femmes very much a focal point.
There is no suggestion that Ferrand-Prévot used such products, but her change in shape underlines how athletes can seek to be lighter and faster.
Speaking at a WADA media day in London, Olivier Rabin, WADA’s Senior Director of Science and Medicine said that when “other substances have been on the monitoring programme in the past, they move from being monitored to being prohibited.”
One recent example of that process is powerful painkiller Tramadol, which was added to WADA’s monitoring list in 2012 and then banned by the UCI in March 2019.
According to Rabin, such bans come into place because WADA has evidence of use that is “well beyond therapeutic reasons.”
‘They could be banned before the Los Angeles Games’
For now a ban remains a way off for the moment. WADA would usually expect to collect evidence, through monitoring, for at least another year.
“The monitoring program allows us to look at those substances in urine samples and see if we detect patterns of abuse,” Rabin said.
“Overweight is an issue in many sports. In the past, to lose weight, you needed to be under calorie restriction and you really needed to starve.”
“The big change with GLP-1 is that you can eat normally and you’re going to lose weight, so that’s a big change.”
Monitoring will continue into, and probably beyond, 2026. To determine whether a product should be banned, WADA uses a three-pronged test, reported Triathlete.
The following boxes have to be ticked for a product to achieve banned status: the potential to enhance performance; an actual or potential health risk to the athlete, and a violation of the spirit of sport.
In the past WADA have also detected products that have been taken by entire teams on the same event, a clear indication of non-therapeutic use.
“That’s typically the abuse of a substance,” Rabin said. “For now we don’t have that information with GLP-1 products, but we are collecting the information so we will see.”
“If in 2026 and 2027 we collect information that shows that GLP-1 agonist semaglutides (weight loss drugs) are being abused in sport, they could be banned before the Los Angeles Olympics,” he confirmed.
But abuse of GLP-1 semaglutides to lean down in pursuit of a better power-to-weight ratio is now is also thought to be leading to other doping practices.
Sport at ‘a critical point’
Rabin explained how competitors are pushing things further.
“Now there is a drug that is a combination of GLP-1 and myostatin inhibitor, to prevent the loss of muscle mass,” Rabin said. “We heard that athletes, to prevent the loss of muscle mass, are also using anabolic steroids.
But does an unhealthy obsession with weight still how sway in the World Tour peloton?
Despite the whispering campaign over Ferrand-Prévot’s weight loss following her Tour Femmes win, the head of nutrition at Visma-Lease a Bike, Soren Lavrsen, told Velo that lighter isn’t always better.
“It’s not just about being the lightest,” he said. “This is about being a sustainable weight and not getting sick. A happy, healthy athlete is a thriving athlete.”
WADA’s monitoring of weight loss drugs flies in the face of the so-called ‘carbohydrate revolution’ that has characterized recent thinking on nutrition.
Supposedly the years of ‘going to bed hungry’ are receding into the rear-view mirror. But with more and more riders leaving the sport young, due to what is roundly described as ‘burnout,’ the anxiety over weight and performance has definitely not gone away.
According to The Cyclists Alliance, which represents women professionals, the sport is at “a critical point” due to the explosive growth of the scene allied to ever-increasing performance expectations.
The TCA’s 2025 member survey states that “poor working conditions lead to athletes ending their careers prematurely” and that “each level of the women’s professional peloton cites different reasons for considering leaving professional cycling earlier than planned.”
Reasons given include dangerous racing conditions; mental health, financial instability and burnout. The reality is that most in the peloton live and race on a knife edge, inhabiting an uncertain world in which weight is a huge factor in performance.
With more riders than ever fighting for fewer and fewer contracts, the attractions of semaglutides are increasing. Weight loss drugs are not currently banned, but will offer some performance certainty in an increasingly uncertain environment.
Source URL: https://velo.outsideonline.com/news/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs-ban-sports/