It’s the elephant in the jockeys’ room. Is it time WADA banned Ozempic?

March 28, 2026 — 8:30am

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Earlier this week, the question of whether NRL players are cutting corners with weight-loss jabs was asked.

In response: Who would actually know?

Separately, in a news article published this week on the Betsy betting website, it was suggested that the Ozempic “craze” had jockeys in all corners of the country plunging the stuff into their veins.

In sports where weight, or the lack thereof, is imperative, you can see how Ozempic might be a valuable tool. For jockeys, imagine no more diets consisting entirely of triple espressos, iceberg lettuce and saunas.

Whether jockeys are allowed to inject themselves with Ozempic needle pens is questionable.

Rule AR136(h) prohibits the use of “anoretics”, or appetite suppressants. Wider than that, though, is a vexed question that has haunted the corridors of sport’s global anti-doping apparatus for more than two years now: Should semaglutide –the active ingredient in Ozempic, Wegovy, and the broader family of GLP-1 receptor agonist medications – be added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List?

When WADA listed semaglutide on its Monitoring Program in 2024, it was a tacit acknowledgement that sport can’t ignore this pharmaceutical phenomenon.

By the time the same topic was discussed at the 2025 World Conference on Doping in Sport, WADA’sHealth, Medical and Research Committee had commissioned targeted research into whether semaglutide has performance-enhancing effects, and hence whether an entirely new prohibited substance category – for weight-management substances – should be established.

The initial findings from that research remain under review; GLP-1 drugs remain permitted in sport for 2026. But the trajectory seems clear: WADA is analysing the matter with requisite seriousness.

The question of the........

© Brisbane Times