Chamney: I understand pressure Fagan was under

IRISH Olympian Thomas Chamney admits he can understand the pressures Martin Fagan was under when he decided to inject himself with EPO.

The four-time Irish men’s 800m champion was sympathetic with Fagan’s fall from grace and subsequent two-year ban.

“Fagan was the master of his own downfall,” said the Crusaders athlete last night.

“I knew he was depressed before he made the decision to take EPO and I do feel sorry for him. There are two sides to this argument, of course. There’s Fagan’s side. No one rang him up to see how he was.

“No one rang him to see was there anything they could do to help him and I felt that [isolation] myself.”

28-year-old Fagan was caught just hours after taking the banned substance by an out-of-competition test at his training base in Arizona. Though he admitted it was his first and only time taking the drugs, Chamney is sympathetic to the runner he grew up with.

“Myself and Martin would be similar enough and I do feel sorry for him. We’re both prone to injuries. We’re both chasing results to try and secure funding — like all athletes, we’re both in an Olympic year and it’s difficult being under pressure, especially when you’ve missed out on competition.

“It can be traumatic at times after all the time and effort you put in, you sometimes feel you’re not getting what you deserve.”

He also accused Athletics Ireland of not doing enough to help athletes.

“Personally I know what he was going through. Every year, you are on the chopping block for funding.

“It’s a year-on-year thing, with Athletics Ireland. Part of the problem in athletics here is that every country is professional and they put their athletes on two and three-year programmes [for funding], whereas here it’s year on year. It’s tough to plan ahead because you’re not sure if you’ll have money to pay for your training.”

Fagan went to the Olympics in Beijing but finished with a DNF beside his name after a debilitating Achilles injury saw him pull out halfway through. But quitting the Chicago marathon with injury, on the verge of securing a London Olympics spot, broke him.

“It’s a constant battle,” stressed Chamney. “I’ve been in that situation. I had been expected to make the final of the Europeans in Barcelona and maybe get a top five or six finish because I’d got a grant of €12,000 but I was injured a lot in the run up to it. It was a traumatic year and I’d spent all my money.

“But all the while in the run-up I got no phone call to see how I was. I trained and trained and tried to get every last drop out of myself and in hindsight, I over-trained. I still hadn’t received a phone call, no one spoke to me.

“So I went to the Europeans, ran shit and the next phone call I got was in January, almost six months later, telling me my grant for that year was in jeopardy. They asked me to send an email of what I was doing and that was it, talk to you later kind of thing. “It was very traumatic so I know where Martin’s coming from.”