Body building: Drug test outcome a secret

Mr New Zealand body building champion Moe Moussaoui. Picture / Kenny Rodger

The New Zealand Federation of Body Builders is refusing to make public the outcome of a tribunal hearing into the positive steroid test returned by Mr New Zealand champion Moe Moussaoui two weeks before he won the title.

The hearing was held last month but federation president Mark Stewart is refusing to reveal the outcome, the identities of the four-person tribunal or their sports, although he says they were not from body building.

But Moussaoui, 30, said last week that no penalty had been imposed.

Stewart would say only that the tribunal - appointed by the body builders federation - decided Moussaoui "had suffered enough through the media before anything went to the tribunal members".

The Weekend Herald revealed last month that Moussaoui failed a drug test one week before winning the Mr New Zealand title in October. His sample is understood to have been positive to two anabolic steroids.

It is normal practice for the federation to report the outcomes of tribunal hearings into drug positives in a newsletter to its members but Stewart said this would not be done on this occasion.

The tribunal hearing was held eight months after Moussaoui's sample was taken.

Stewart said the body builders federation preferred to have the case heard by the Sports Disputes Tribunal, an independent body made up of retired judges and senior lawyers, but Moussaoui had refused.

Moussaoui said his positive was caused by "a mix-up".

He had produced a letter at his hearing stating he had passed doping tests at competitions in the Middle East around the time he failed his test in Wellington.

He had also suggested the Sydney Olympic Analytical Laboratory - used for tests at the Sydney Olympics - may have got his sample mixed up.

Moussaoui said his future was now on the international professional circuit where doping is not banned.

"I just didn't like the gossip and that some people took a bad impression about me, although there is no hidden agenda. If someone asked me now I don't care. I'm [now pro], I'm allowed to use whatever I want to make it to the top."

Herald: Will you use steroids now?

Moussaoui: "If I want to take it to [the top level] ... it's a different story. You've got to do what you have to do or you quit." He said he was in the process of making that decision.

Moussaoui said that he had put forward a motion to the NZFBB annual meeting last month to scrap drug testing for all but national championships. He was upset that the motion was withdrawn while he was overseas and without his agreement.

Moussaoui claimed 75 per cent of members did not want drug testing.

The NZFBB penalty for a steroid positive is usually a two-year ban from its competitions and forfeiture of trophies.