Agent Blames Trainer for Sprinters" Failed Drug Tests Jed Jacobsohn for The New York Times Jamaica's Asafa Powell, second from left, a former world-record holder, has admitted testing positive for a banned stimulant. A day after two top Jamaican sprinters, Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, acknowledged that they had tested positive for a banned stimulant, their agent blamed the test result on a Canadian trainer working with the team. The trainer, Christopher Xuereb, had provided Powell with a combination of about 20 supplements and injections - none of them banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency - according to an e-mail the agent, Paul Doyle, received Sunday from Xuereb. The New York Times obtained the e-mail but it could not be independently authenticated as being sent by Xuereb. Xuereb did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Doyle said he believed Xuereb's combination was responsible for the positive drug tests for Powell, a former world-record holder in the 100 meters, and Simpson, part of Jamaica's gold medal 4x100-meter relay team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Some of the supplements were commonplace, like vitamin C, vitamin D and the pain reliever Aleve. But the e-mail stated that Xuereb had also injected Powell with exotic substances like Actovegin, a drug used by Lance Armstrong's U.S. Postal cycling team that is made from calves" blood extract and is said to enhance stamina. "We were trying to figure out what went wrong, and it was pretty obvious to us where we needed to look," Doyle said in a telephone interview Monday. "There are many different things he was giving them, and we still don't know which one caused the positive test," Doyle added. Most of the supplements he gave were for recovery or energy during workouts. Oxilofrine, the banned stimulant for which Powell tested positive, was not listed in Xuereb's e-mail. Xuereb wrote that he had provided a smaller combination of substances to Simpson. Doyle's accusations came on the heels of a raid that the Italian police conducted on the hotel where Xuereb and the Jamaican sprinters were staying in the northeastern city of Lignano Sabbiadoro. A police official said they seized drugs and supplements that were being analyzed. It is unclear whether the substances were legal or not, police officials said. Local authorities have opened an investigation into the case, but no arrests have been made. The revelations about the Jamaican sprinters came as Tyson Gay, the best American sprinter over the past decade, acknowledged that he too had tested positive for a banned substance. Gay, 30, had long presented himself as a model of clean competition who spoke out against doping. The fresh round of positive tests is a major embarrassment for a sport that has long been plagued with doping. Several Olympic 100-meter champions, including Ben Johnson and Linford Christie, have served drug suspensions. A host of other athletes, including many prominent American runners, have tested positive for banned substances over the past 30 years. Powell, one of the fastest runners of his generation, and Simpson, who won silver medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2012 Olympics in London in addition to her 2004 gold, have not yet had their backup samples tested to confirm the positive results. Powell issued a statement Sunday denying that he ever knowingly took a banned substance. He said his team had launched "an internal investigation" and pledged to cooperate with authorities on the matter. "My fault here however is not cheating but instead not being more vigilant," he said. Doyle said that the two Jamaican sprinters had read the labels of all the supplements they had taken, and that they did not believe they had taken banned substances. World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines say that every athlete is responsible for ensuring that banned substances do not enter his or her body. The athletes were cooperating with law enforcement and antidoping authorities, Doyle said. Doyle acknowledged that it has become a sports cliché for athletes to claim ignorance and blame their trainers when they fail drug tests. But he pointed out that Powell and Simpson "have had hundreds of clean tests throughout the years" and only now tested positive. Don Catlin, the former head of U.C.L.A."s Olympic Analytical Lab, said that even athletes who take benign supplements could expose themselves to banned substances that make their way into products without being clearly labeled or identified. "There's always a risk something could have something else in it," Catlin said. In an effort to clean up a sport widely seen as tainted with doping, track officials recently instituted a sophisticated testing program called the biological passport, which is similar to a program used in cycling. The program monitors athletes" blood profiles over time to find variations that could indicate the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In March, track and field's governing body said it was investigating 17 possible doping cases uncovered by the biological passport program. Gaia Pianigiani reported from Rome and Mary Pilon from New York.