Cathal Dennehy: how much is too much to spend in anti-doping?
Michael O’Reilly tested positive for methandienone, an anabolic steroid, before the Rio Olympics.
STILL wonder why he cared. Several years ago, I was at the Irish Athletics Indoor Championships in Abbotstown, and shortly after a breakthrough performance by an up-and-coming sprinter, I tracked the athlete down for a chat, looking to mine some quotes.
Alongside him was a doping control officer (DCO), whose job it is not to let such athletes out of their sight after a race and then accompany them somewhere private to watch them pee in a cup. It’s not the most enviable job in sport, but it is one of the most important. Any clean athlete will tell you that.
After asking a few questions trackside, I thanked the athlete and the DCO for their patience and that’s when the officer approached me. “There’s to be no mention of me in your article,” he said. Puzzled by the paranoia, but having no reason to waste column inches on it, I reassured him there wouldn’t be. He then repeated, deadly serious, “No mention, now.”
Then he walked off.
I’ve yet to learn why he was so worried a reporter might mention there was drug testing at nationals, or why he felt he could tell a journalist what they could and couldn’t report at nationals. Was Ireland’s strict, robust and well-funded anti-doping system a secret? Was he worried that Sport Ireland drug testing an amateur student-athlete would be viewed as a scandal? I’m still not sure.
Either way, that memory came back as I sifted through Sport Ireland’s 2023 anti-doping report last week, which revealed the cost of the programme last year was €2.44m, up from €2.05m in 2022 and €1.85m in 2021. Wages have also risen significantly. In 2018, the anti-doping unit spent €253,000 on salaries while last year, that hit €390,000, a 54% increase in five years. The cost and frequency of testing is also rising, with just under €1m spent on 1303 tests in 2019 versus €1.34 million on 1595 tests last year.
But you know what’s not increasing? Doping busts. The return in positive tests for the €6.3m invested over the last three years has so far amounted to one Tug of War participant and one motorsport competitor getting popped for cocaine.
Are those the kind of busts we really want?
The first of those, in motorsport, provided evidence it was consumed recreationally but when the Tug of War athlete failed to do so, perhaps not wanting to involve others by getting the required witness statements, he got a four-year ban. Harsh? Yes, but that’s what the World Anti-Doping Agency Code dictated. One case is still pending from last year, related to someone evading, refusing or failing to submit a sample, which may or may not result in a sanction.
Whether it does or not, the lack of meaningful busts poses key questions. How much is too much to spend on anti-doping? And does the lack of positive tests mean Irish sport is squeaky clean at the top level or that our system is ineffective? I don’t believe either is true. Read enough about the dark, devious side of sport and you quickly realise many countries don’t follow the same approach as Ireland, which invests heavily in policing its athletes (at least in Olympic sports). Talk to those same athletes and you’ll hear of a system that feels like it’s out to get them, no matter how strongly they’re against doping.
A few minutes past the deadline in telling authorities where you’ll be staying in a few weeks’ time? That’s a filing failure. A family member had an emergency and you forgot to update them when you weren’t home during your testing window? That’s a missed test. Three of those and you’re out.
Back in 2019, two of the three violations in Ireland came from sportspeople who’d consumed cannabis, while the other was from St Patrick’s Athletic footballer Brandon Miele for “evading, refusing, or failing” to supply a sample. Miele had spent hours after a game trying to do so but, due to dehydration, could provide only a partial sample. While drinking and waiting, drinking and waiting, he was called repeatedly by his partner who told him his four-year-old daughter had hit her head and would be taken to hospital. Stressed, anxious, scared, Miele eventually left, declining the DCO’s offer to accompany him, not wanting to bring further stress on his family. That was a costly error. He got a two-year ban.
Is that the kind of bust we want?
There have been some genuine doping cases in recent years, but not at the very top level. Triathlete Ben Shaw, who’s based in Australia, was given a four-year ban in 2020 after getting done for ligandrol, a selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM). That same year weightlifter, Olusola Friday, got popped for a steroid, nandrolone, and got a four-year ban, while Carlow Gaelic footballer Ray Walker was given a four-year ban for meldonium, a metabolic modulator that was added to the banned list in 2016, a move that caught out Maria Sharapova, among others.
The last time a world-class Irish sportsperson got caught? You’ve to go back to 2016 when boxer Michael O’Reilly tested positive for methandienone, an anabolic steroid, before the Rio Olympics. He blamed it on a supplement, got a four-year ban, and rightly so. That’s the kind of doper the system is designed to catch, but the truth is it also snares athletes in cases that, in truth, we shouldn’t be wasting money on. Because there’s only so much to go around.
Then there’s the time it snared an innocent athlete, the Gareth Turnbull case in 2005 one of the biggest blots on the anti-doping unit’s record. That could have been a grave miscarriage of justice had the Belfast runner not ploughed a six-figure sum into his legal defence to clear his name.
As Turnbull told me last year: “In a court of law, you’re innocent until proven guilty. In athletics, you’re guilty until proven innocent.”
The case offered a troubling example of the unequal fight that exists when an athlete has an adverse analytical finding, even if, as in Turnbull’s case, it was caused by the not-so-performance-enhancing effects of an off-season bender.
That’s the nightmare scenario for all concerned — an athlete wrongfully tarred; an anti-doping authority ultimately embarrassed — but the reality is far fewer innocent athletes still get banned than guilty ones go free. Testing is still responsible for the majority of doping cases, but with each test costing almost €1000, it doesn’t come cheap. Is it worth it? The €6.3m spend since 2021 to catch two guys taking cocaine looks a pitiful return, but it’s worth remembering the chief goal in anti-doping is not detection, but deterrence. To stop athletes doping in the first place.
The lack of sanctions might make it feel like a waste of money — and in certain places, it undoubtedly is — but it at least shows the majority of Ireland’s best are not following where Michelle de Bruin, Cathal Lombard, Sean Kelly, Martin Fagan, Cian O’Connor or Michael O’Reilly went before.
You never know for sure, of course, but the system allows us to have a fair degree of confidence in the integrity of Irish sport. Still, as that budget keeps ballooning, without catching real cheats, you do also have to wonder: How much is too much to spend on anti-doping?
