COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The next Olympic doping scandal could be right on your doorstep.
Treasure of so-called research chemicals known as peptidesMany are banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and some are not approved for use in humans in the United States. They can be purchased with a simple click of a button in online stores. One seller is Amazon. Another company is Alibaba, a sponsor of the International Olympic Committee.
The drugs' easy availability coupled with their difficult-to-detect nature is exactly the toxic combination that doping regulators and Olympic officials are trying to avoid. With only two months left until the Cortina Games in Milan, they are hoping to end a string of scandals surrounding Russians And Chinese which have been disrupting the Games, both summer and winter, since 2014.
While online pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements have been viewed as a risk by anti-doping authorities for years, the influx of certain hard-to-detect peptides—chains of amino acids that make up protein. Marketeed to help with everything from anti-aging post-workout recovery, weight loss and memory loss are more challenging.
“These substances have become widespread,” said Oliver Catlin, president Institute of Anti-Doping Scienceswhose late father Don was one of the godfathers of anti-doping research.
Most of these peptides are so-called “investigational chemicals” that are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and are also prohibited by the WADA code under either the “S2” classification, which includes peptides, or the “SO” classification, an all-encompassing category for “unapproved substances.”
Several substances specifically listed in the “S0” category, such as the popular BPC 157, are placed there because the pharmacological composition of the substances does not fit into another category of the prohibited list.
One of the tricky parts of the “S0” category is that it includes unapproved substances that are not specifically listed because, for example, there is no way to test the drug and regulators don't want to disclose it to users.
Catlin's research found hundreds of banned or illegal peptides available on the online market, as well as an ever-changing menu of products, some of which were removed after The Associated Press began asking questions.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” he said. “Over the past five years, the widespread use of peptides has increased dramatically.”
Dan Burke, a former FDA official who now heads intelligence and investigations at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said new-age peptides are hard to find online because the U.S. law prohibiting their sale dates back to 1938, “and it just doesn't work and doesn't work to this day.”
“The bad guys know this, and that's why this thing is spreading,” Burke said.
While some peptides—insulin and the new popular weight loss generator GLP-1 are some of the best examples—are time-tested, completely legal (with a prescription), and effective, other substances in this category are not legally sold as supplements or as prescription or over-the-counter medications.
Some of them, including the BPC-157, can be found on several online sites, including Amazon and Alibaba. The latter is a major sponsor of the IOC, “committed to helping the IOC transform the Olympic Games into the digital age.”
When asked by the AP about the connection, an IOC spokesman said Alibaba “has confirmed to us that it continually monitors its marketplaces and that it does not have any banned substances on the WADA 2025 list.” The AP was contacted by an Alibaba.com representative who asked for links to “problem” drugs sold on its marketplace and, after the AP sent two of them, said they had removed the items.
The company said it prohibits all prohibited substances in accordance with the WADA Prohibited Substances List.
“While some of these substances may not be legally restricted in the context of general consumers, we have actively adopted stricter standards to define operational boundaries, and our compliance efforts go beyond passive compliance and minimum legal requirements,” the company said in a statement.
Amazon told the AP that it requires all products offered on its marketplace to comply with applicable laws and regulations and is in the process of removing products that violate its policies. Within days of contacting the AP, the website removed some of the medications the AP asked about, but a number of listings remained and several new ones appeared.
The current peptide boom comes about 25 years later. late Victor Conte became a household name in the sport for developing and selling “clear” and “cream” products.
These were the names of the so-called designer steroids that led to the infamous Bay Area Laboratories Cooperative (BALCO) scandal that engulfed baseball and athletics.
Like some peptides, designer steroids were undetectable at the time, but not easy to obtain. It took years to discover their existence, let alone analyze their effectiveness or punish athletes who used them.
Fast forward 25 years, and this new model of performance amplifiers is in some cases as difficult to discover, but as easy to buy as pressing a few buttons on a computer.
WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald said it was not his jurisdiction to make PEDs available on websites, but two years ago WADA began working with national anti-doping and law enforcement agencies to combat the illegal production, sale and supply of performance-enhancing drugs of all kinds.
“The illegal production and trafficking of PEDs is not just a sporting problem – it is a social problem that requires a multifaceted approach,” he said.
It could take years to figure out whether drug trafficking could be the trigger for the next Olympic scandal.
Like some of the blood-boosting drugs they claim to mimic, most peptides disappear quickly from the blood, making them difficult to detect. The IOC stores blood samples for up to 10 years to allow for possible improvements in detection long after the event.
USADA and other anti-doping organizations have been warning athletes for years about the potential legal and eligibility risks associated with the use of unapproved substances—whether prescription drugs or untested supplements—and also explaining the health risks to elite athletes and others seeking a slight edge in the gym.
“From a consumer consumer perspective, be careful: Any time you consume or inject something without knowing what you're taking, there is a potential for adverse health effects, and that is a concern,” said Matt Fedoruk, USADA's chief scientific officer.
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Winter Games AP: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
