New rules mean new dangers for GAA coaches and players on supplements

THE COUNTRY’s leading sports nutrition expert claims the GAA hasn’t grasped the potential impact of strict new anti-doping measures brought in last month.

Since January 1, those involved in a doping violation committed by another person are to be sanctioned in the same way. It’s an attempt to address complicity where doping offences occur, though it also opens up all associated parties to potential sanctions.

A major fear is that a player taking contaminated supplements will fail a test, with those around the player equally at risk of sanction.

The new rules do allow for those unwittingly involved in violations where supplements are involved to get a sanction that ranges from ‘a reprimand to a maximum of two years’.

However, Dr Sharon Madigan, Head of Performance Nutrition at the Irish Institute of Sport, warned that, in practical terms, everyone from individual coaches to club officials and county boards should be aware of the increased responsibilities. At an Ulster GAA Coaching and Games Development conference in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, she issued a warning to those associated with players taking supplements.

“This is a really serious issue for the GAA,” said Dr Madigan. “We have got to remember that, as of January 2015, not only is there strict liability on players to know what they’ve taken and what they’ve put into their bodies but also now clubs, coaches, trainers, nutritionists [do too]. Anybody that supplies or gives or recommends a player to take something will now, if a player tests positive, be charged with trafficking. Clubs, county boards, players, county managers, everybody is going to be put in there.”

Dr Madigan, worked as Ulster Rugby’s performance dietician from 2008 to 2011, and has also worked with club and county GAA teams.

“I think it’s commonplace that a lot of inter-county players do take products for whatever reason, whether it’s as a group or as an individual,” she told the Irish Examiner.

“I don’t think the GAA have got the grasp of this, that they could be responsible for providing, very innocuously, a supplement, because they’ve been told: ‘Oh, we need to get everybody on such and such.’ They need to have a good strategy for checking where that’s coming from. Is it tested? Have they got good paperwork for it?

“My concern is that there’s vested interests in a lot of this too. You’ve got people that are selling products themselves, as well as being coaches and trainers.

“That’s why significant influencers have to be really cautious. For me, [coaches/fitness experts] can’t be associated with selling or providing products. But you can advise on a range of different things that will help.”

Dr Madigan suggested there is a mixture of GAA players sourcing supplementary products individually, off websites like Amazon, and through group schemes like clubs and county set-ups.

“I had a good example of a player that was taking a product. I suggested that he needed to be very careful of how he was getting it. He was getting it through Amazon. That particular product through Amazon was much cheaper than buying it through the company. But the reason for the difference in price was the batch that the company was selling was tested whereas the batch on Amazon wasn’t tested.”

Dr Madigan advised that those involved with the supply of dietary supplements to look out for the ‘informed sport’ logo on products.

“That shows that you as a player or trainer or coach have tried everything to provide your players, or you as a player, with products that you think are okay,” she said.

Dr Madigan said that a litre of milk will often supply the nutrients and calorific requirements players feel they get from supplements.

She also warned about the controversial supplement Jack 3D, linked to a number of deaths, which she claimed is “on the changing room tables of clubs that I’ve been told about”.

“This is one I really have concerns about, this is going on at club level, at county level, in terms of a pre-work-out product — Jack 3D,” she told conference delegates. “The Food Safety Authority of Ireland cannot guarantee that the product has the DMAA [a substance linked to a number of deaths] removed from it. They can’t, because they don’t know how long products have been in stock. Jack 3D say it doesn’t have it [DMAA] anymore. I would be suspicious that that’s the case. Never mind a positive doping test, this product has been associated with at least four deaths.”

Dr Madigan told the group, many of whom were coaches and trainers, that young men are now conscious of their body image. She spoke of a young hurler in Leinster who asked how he could, “look like the guy on the front of Men’s Health magazine”.

“Young women have always had this, they’ve always been bombarded with images of bodies,” she said, displaying an image of David Beckham’s topless chest and abdomen. “Young men less so until recently. But now this is the norm. This is what they’re looking for. It’s leading them wrongly to cut back on the amount of food they’re eating. They’re thinking this is a great thing they’re doing, that this will achieve the six-pack they’re looking for.”