Club blasts runner’s claims

CATHAL Lombard’s own athletics club yesterday expressed disappointment at the admission by the Cork runner that he took a banned performance-enhancing drug.

Leevale Athletic Club secretary Liam Horgan said the athlete’s suggestion that Olympic hopefuls could not compete at the highest level without taking banned substances was “total rubbish”.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio, Mr Horgan said no decision on Lombard’s future membership of Leevale could be made until Athletics Ireland concludes its examination into reports that he failed a drugs test carried out in Switzerland last month.

“Nobody at the club had any indication of what was happening,” added Mr Horgan.

He said the club’s committee had been advised by the sport’s governing body not to discuss the controversy at its regular meeting earlier this week.

However, Mr Horgan said the former solicitor’s father, Michael, who used to coach athletes at Leevale, and his family were devastated by the scandal.

Asked if Leevale’s own good name had been damaged, Mr Horgan said people at grassroots level in the sport would know of the good work done by Cork’s largest athletics club. “That level of drug taking is at another level,” he remarked.

Mr Horgan added that the club would advise all its younger members that Lombard’s use of the banned drug EPO was “an isolated incident”.

However, the trainer admitted he was aware that Lombard was the focus of attention for anti-doping agencies because of major improvements in the athlete’s times over a short period. But he said that it was not something which had raised suspicions at Leevale.

Meanwhile, John Quigley, the chairperson of one of Leevale’s rival clubs in Cork - Eagle Athletic Club - warned that such controversies could act as a further disincentive to getting young people interested in the sport.

“While we don’t have any under-age teams, everyone is aware there has been a fall-off in getting young people involved in athletics, largely because there are so many competing attractions,” he said.

Mr Quigley also complained that poor facilities acted as another important factor in the falling numbers of people joining athletics clubs.

“A lot of clubs down the country are lucky to have the use of a Portakabin and a field,” said Mr Quigley.

He claimed the notion of drug-taking to boost performance would be “abhorrent” to rank-and-file members of sports clubs. However, he expressed confidence that the ease of obtaining such substances via mail order and over the internet would not increase the threat of abuse among the lower ranks of competitive athletics.

“I can’t see that happening,” added Mr Quigley.

He also said that he believed most genuine sports participants would be shocked by the idea of “trying to play catch-up” by using banned performance-enhancing drugs to improve results.

Meanwhile, Olympic Council of Ireland president Pat Hickey expressed his satisfaction that current anti-doping strategies were working, as evidenced by the recent positive test result.

“We have to weed out the cancer of doping in sport,” he said.

Mr Hickey also welcomed the growing number of international sports people who have been found to be taking illegal substances as a good thing, irrespective of what their nationality is.

He claimed it was proof that world anti-doping bodies were winning the battle against drug taking in international sports.

Contrary to some media reports, Mr Hickey also insisted that morale among the Irish Olympic team, which is temporarily based in Cyprus before the Games in Athens, remained high. “Their morale, enthusiasm and efficiency are unaffected,” he said.