Premier League stars ‘given banned drugs’ by British doctor

A British doctor has alleged that he prescribed banned performance-enhancing drugs to 150 sportsmen including several Premier League footballers, according to a Sunday Times report.

The paper said Dr Mark Bonar claimed his “clients” included an England cricketer, British Tour de France cyclists, a British boxing champion, tennis players and martial arts competitors as well as footballers.

Bonar was said to have boasted about treating players from Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester City and Birmingham City, although there is no evidence the clubs were aware of any alleged relationship he might have had with their footballers.

In the past six years he has treated more than 150 sportsmen from the UK and abroad with banned substances such as erythropoietin (EPO), steroids and human growth hormone, and the performance improvements were “phenomenal”, the report added.

Neither the newspaper nor Reuters was able to substantiate the claims made by the doctor but the news is likely to cast a further shadow on the sporting world ahead of the Rio Olympics in August.

Russia was suspended from international track and field last year following a report exposing widespread cheating and corruption among its athletes.

The country faces a ban from the Olympics unless Russia can prove to the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IAAF governing body that it has met a series of conditions regarding its anti-doping operations. Reuters