Drugs ‘most likely given close to event’

A SENIOR veterinary pharmacologist claimed yesterday the drugs found in Waterford Crystal’s A sample would most likely be administered shortly before competition.

UCD's Dr Tom Barragry, an Advisor to the European Equine Central Doping Committee, also said it was "highly, highly improbable" that the drugs could be inadvertently consumed.

Speaking on the Eamon Dunphy Breakfast Programme, he said it was "highly unlikely" the substances found in A samples from Waterford Crystal and ABC Landliebe Fluphenazine, Guanabenz and Zuclopenthixol would linger in a horses system for weeks after they were administered.

"There is a depot injection of Fluphenazine that lasts for three or four weeks but I can't see why one would give a depot injection and have an uncontrolled situation when one wants to give these presumably as close to performance as is possible for a predictable affect," he said.

Yesterday, the Brazilian show jumper who finished second behind Cian O'Connor in Athens said he would not be satisfied with the possibility of a B test on a blood sample, when the initial A test had been conducted on the urine sample.

"We'll see how it unfolds. I think with the A we have enough details," Rodrigo Pessoa said.

"We're talking about Olympic Games testing and there's a lot at stake here so we are very suspicious about files being taken and samples going missing," he said.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Horseracing Forensics Laboratory (HFL), the Cambridgeshire Laboratory originally charged with testing the B sample from Waterford Crystal, said: "categorically" they did not know they were to receive the courier package on October 21, which was later stolen.

The package containing the sample had been dispatched from the Paris lab the day before.

The bogus lab worker would have known that the package had been sent and would have needed the 10 digit Airway Bill number so that they could ask couriers DHL to deliver the package to the gates of the lab.

He or she would also have needed the code number given to the sample by the FEI.

DHL couriers confirmed that it was contacted by someone claiming to be from HFL, asking that the pick-up point be changed.

The courier was then advised of the switch and met a man, believed to be English, at the gates of the laboratory and handed over the package.

HFL notified DHL on October 26 that the package had never arrived. HFL themselves had received a fax on October 25 relating to the code number on the sample. It was then they discovered that the package had never arrived.

The International Equestrian Federation is expected to release a statement this morning on the Waterford Crystal controversy.