Sport Ireland defends handling of Colvert case

Sport Ireland has defended its handling of Steven Colvert’s doping case in the wake of a claim by one of the world’s leading anti-doping experts that the Irish sprinter was wrongfully convicted.

Colvert was banned from the sport for two years in July 2015 after testing positive for recombinant erythropoietin (r-EPO) the previous year, but since then, several international scientists have spoken out against the finding, arguing his case should have been dropped due to inconsistencies in test data from the Cologne lab which analysed his sample.

In a documentary released last week, anti-doping scientist Don Catlin examined the data from Colvert’s case and said his sample appeared negative, contradicting the view of those at the World Anti-Doping Agency [WADA] labs in Cologne and Seibersdorf, who both deemed it positive for synthetic EPO.