Rider Samelo do Amaral Accepts Three-Year Ineligibility After Positive Test at 2026 IBJJF Worlds

Rider Samelo do Amaral, 30, of São Paulo, will serve three years of ineligibility after testing positive for several prohibited anabolic substances at the 2026 IBJJF World Championship. The sample was collected in competition on May 31, 2026. Beyond the suspension, his competitive results from August 23, 2024 onward have been wiped, including medals, points and prizes.

Rider Samelo do Amaral Accepts Three-Year Sanction and Loses Results Back to August 2024

USADA announced that Rider Samelo do Amaral agreed to a three-year ban from competing. The sanction follows an in-competition test at the 2026 IBJJF World Championship on May 31, 2026, which found drostanolone, a metabolite of drostanolone, and 19-norandrosterone, which is a metabolite of nandrolone or of other 19-norsteroids. The ineligibility is counted from July 1, 2026, when a provisional suspension was imposed on him. His results in IBJJF-sanctioned competitions, and those of any signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, are disqualified from August 23, 2024 onward, which USADA gives as when he started using the substances. Medals, points and prizes are forfeited.

USADA is the United States anti-doping agency. The IBJJF has not signed the World Anti-Doping Code, but it contracted USADA to run testing at this event, and the sample was handled to World Anti-Doping Agency standards. The substances involved are non-specified anabolic agents, which are prohibited at all times, not only on competition days.

The sanction was cut from four years to three because he admitted the violation and accepted the sanction within 20 days of being notified of the charge, a reduction the Code provides in its Article 10.8.1. The disqualification reaches back to when he began using the substances, so results from before the positive test are removed as well. That is the part of the outcome most relevant to anyone who competed against him in that window, since placings and points from those events are forfeited. The case also shows that testing at a federation that has not signed the Code can still lead to sanctions on Code terms when an agency like USADA is brought in to run it.