Pro Boxer Who Failed Drug Test After Eating Too Much Breakfast Has His Name Cleared

boxer Conor Benn

Getty Image / Leigh Dawney / istock composite


London-born welterweight Conor Benn is back in the sport of Boxing. It took nearly 5 months to clear his name after a failed drug test for clomifene, a female fertility drug, but he maintained his innocence and an investigation proved that to be true.

The cause of Conor Benn’s positive drug test for clomifene turned out to be a big ol’ breakfast. More specifically, he ate too many eggs.

Eggs? Yes, eggs.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) previously looked into the possibility that clomifene could present itself in urine samples after egg consumption. They first mentioned it on the WADA website in 2020.

More recently, a study titled ‘Assessing human urinary clomiphene metabolites after consumption of eggs from clomiphene-treated laying hens using chromatographic-mass spectrometric approacheswas published in the NIH’s National Library of Medicine.

What they found in that 2022 study is “Maximum urinary concentrations of hydroxy-clomiphene (HC) between 80 and 300 pg mL-1 were detected following the consumption of clomiphene-containing eggs, which would constitute AAFs if observed in athletes’ doping control samples.”

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) defines an AAF as “a report from a WADA-accredited laboratory that identifies the presence of a prohibited substance and/or its metabolites or markers in a sample. This is commonly referred to as a positive test.”

In layman’s terms, what they’ve found is eating eggs can sometimes trigger a positive drug test/cause an athlete to fail a drug test by testing positive for a banned substance. And this is precisely what happened for Conor Benn with the clomifene positive test.

This was all I can think of when reading through those studies:

Conor Benn Is Back In Boxing

Conor Benn will now be reinstated into the World Boxing Council ratings, according to BBC Sport.

The World Boxing Council issued a statement announcing Conor Benn’s innocence and reinstatement. They outlined the full investigation and the statement concluded with this:

The WBC found that: (1) there was no conclusive evidence that Mr. Benn engaged in intentional or knowing ingestion of Clomiphene; (2) there were no failures in the procedures related to sample collection, sample analysis, or violations of Mr. Benn’s B Sample rights that would justify questioning or invalidating the Adverse Finding; and (3) Mr. Benn’s documented and highly-elevated consumption of eggs during the times relevant to the sample collection, raised a reasonable explanation for the Adverse Finding.

It is 100% worth noting that this is a WBC decision and the British Boxing Board of Control says this “does not affect the ongoing implementation” of their rules and regulations, according to Sky Sports.

So while this is a huge win for Conor Benn, his fight to box again in the UK is still an uphill battle.

Here is a taste of what fans have been missing in the time that Conor Benn has been sidelined since October:

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Cass Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of BroBible. Based out of Florida, he covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors.