Coghlan tempted to take drugs

IRISH athletics legend Eamonn Coghlan yesterday admitted he was tempted to use a performance enhancing substance in 1988.

Triple Olympian Coghlan made the startling revelation on Setanta’s iTalkSport programme during a debate about Martin Fagan’s positive drugs test.

Coghlan recalled: “In 1988, I went through a low, perhaps the same low Martin Fagan has been going through over the last number of years. I decided to consult with a sports doctor in New York and we spoke about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He actually gave me a prescription to go and buy the drugs. So I had this prescription on Park Avenue — and was outside the drug store. Not with my name on the prescription, but somebody else’s. I was looking at this prescription thinking ‘will I or won’t I, will I or won’t I’. Then I just tore it up and said ‘I can’t go down this road.’

“Why would I throw away everything that I’ve achieved since I was a 12-year-old kid?”

Coghlan said of Fagan: “Martin cheated nobody but himself. Martin took EPO to try get to the table, he wasn’t even on the playing pitch in international terms. He made a big mistake, but I have a lot of compassion for Martin. I don’t condone what he did, he was wrong but in fairness to him he put his hands up immediately and said ‘I did it’, let’s move on.”