Lombard ‘must have felt he had a chance of medals’
"This guy saying he didn't do it to win any medals or anything like that what was he doing running in the first place? He risked his whole career to take these drugs so he must have felt he would be in with a chance of winning something," said Connacht-based Jarlath Cunningham yesterday.
Lombard was targeted for extra testing when his race times showed extraordinary levels of improvement, which the athlete himself claimed was due to new training regimes.
"He probably convinced himself that he wouldn't get caught," Cunningham said.
"It's not the nicest of examples but it's like young fellas growing up and seeing a load of different girls even though they're going out with someone. You live in a sort of denial that it'll ever come back to haunt you.
"It must be easier to do that too when you're after the ultimate goal, which the Olympics would be for a guy like that. The improvements in his times were there all along and that would have kept him going. It's like you hear of guys who are heavily in to weight training. They become so addicted to it that they can't stop even if they want to.
"By all accounts he's known as a nice guy but he probably got addicted to what the drugs were doing for him. Everyone is looking for an edge in sport, that's the bottom line. I'd feel sorry for him but you'd think at 27 years of age he'd know better."
The naive manner in which the Leevale athlete went about using EPO was also something of a surprise, said Cunningham, but said that again a refusal to look reality in the face may have been a factor.
"There might have been the temptation to think that, being from Ireland, they wouldn't be bothered with him. He wasn't anyone very famous and he might have thought, 'I'm just an ordinary Joe Soap', but what you have to remember is that once you're on the international stage you're there to be scrutinised like everybody else.
"You have to wonder why he did it the way he did though. Looking these things up on the internet what most people wouldn't realise is that a lot of these things just don't work. You don't hear either that up to 16 cyclists were dying in a year because they were using banned drugs."
The Irish Olympic team's Chef de Mission William O'Brien has already indicated that Lombard's positive test has had no bearing on the remainder of the competitors. He said the fact that the news broke so closely to the Games may actually have been a help.
"The news wouldn't bother any of the other athletes. By now, with the Olympics so close, they should be entirely focused on themselves. If they're not, then they have a problem with or without this news. If anything it takes the focus off them to a great extent. Nobody cares now that Sonia O'Sullivan finished third in her race last weekend. It's all bad PR for the Irish authorities rather than bad for the athletes. Sure, they'll think 'too bad' but they'll get on with it."
Cunningham has amassed years of experience in the area of sports science after spells with the Crossmolina and Sligo football teams.
However, with everyone seeking that extra edge in modern sports some illegally he feels the entire culture of preparing sportspeople for the competitive international stage in Ireland is lamentably poor.
"As a country we need to take stock of our infrastructure for top class athletes. What we need to do is expose them to a more competitive environment from a younger age.
"You look at the likes of Maria Sharapova, the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods and what they have in common is focused, committed even selfish parents who backed them 100% of the way by putting them in the sort of environments where they could progress.
"Whether that's an academy or whatever you have to ask yourself if that's the way to go. You look at some of the top Irish athletes and some of them train to be doctors or whatever at the same time as they are training to go to the Olympics.
"How can you expect to compete with the best like that?"
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