Lombard scandal - Irish drugs battle a drop in the ocean

The real heroes of the Cathal Lombard saga are the drug testers and, in spite of everything, the athlete himself also deserves credit for admitting his guilt.

In the process he essentially gave due credit to the testers in marked contrast with other drug cheats who tried to lie their way out of trouble.

Lombard said he used the drug EPO because there is no other way of being competitive with others using performance-enhancing substances. In other words, the only way to compete with the cheats who have been dominating the sport was to join them.

In the early years of the modern Olympic Games, Irish athletes were able to compete with the best in the world. For instance, the winner of every hammer-throw event but one prior to 1936 was Irish-born.

After the Second World War, Eastern Bloc countries used sport to demonstrate the supposed superiority of the communist system.

Most Irish athletes were unable to compete on the international stage, because they were pure amateurs competing against so-called “shamateurs” who were, for all intents and purposes, professional athletes.

Behind the Iron Curtain, the governments not only funded sport and sustained athletes, they also boosted them by allowing them benefit from the latest scientific advances. Many of their great athletes are now suffering from the harmful after-effects of performance-enhancing drugs that had not been properly tested for their impact on the human body.

American athletes adopted their own form of professionalism by being paid secretly and provided with drugs to enhance their performances. Carl Lewis, who was considered the greatest Olympic athlete of the modern era, failed three drugs tests shortly before the 1988 Olympics, but his association covered this up.

The pitch on which Irish athletes were being asked to compete was not a level one. Athletes who were subsequently exposed as drug cheats robbed Eamon Coughlan and Sonia O’Sullivan of medals on the world’s stage. Our athletes were good sports, but they were competing against people for whom winning was all that counted.

Lombard was not content with just being a good sport, he wished to compete and he has admitted this openly.

Al Guy of International Doping Tests and Management commended this openness yesterday. “It is very good to see such a clear and honest admission at this stage,” he said. He essentially confirmed that drug use is currently endemic in athletics, and that there are teams of professionals to ensure that the drug cheats are not detected.

“In many ways the sport itself has been damaged by its own people, by its own administrators who, in fact, do not have the balls to take on this,” Mr Guy said.

The Irish Sports Council has struck a powerful blow against drugs in sport, but we must press for the sport to be cleaned up internationally.

So many Olympic heroes have been exposed as drug cheats that the essence of sportsmanship that was at the heart of the Olympic ideal has been lost.