Lombard ‘logic’ rubbish, says O’Sullivan

IRISH running legend Marcus O’Sullivan has dismissed Cathal Lombard’s explanation for choosing to use performance-enhancing drugs.

The four-time Olympian, now men’s track and field head coach at his alma mater Villanova University in Philadelphia, said he found no logic in Lombard’s admission to the Irish Examiner’s athletics correspondent Brendan Mooney that he just wanted to be as competitive as he could and “have an equal chance with everyone else”.

Speaking while on a family holiday in Vermont, O’Sullivan, 43, said of his fellow Corkman: “To give him credit he owned up right away, not that that helps the situation at all, and I’m very saddened by it.

“I disagree with his argument that he couldn’t compete on that level so therefore the logic would be that he should use drugs.

“I understand where he’s coming from but there was an inference in that statement that because everyone else is doing it then he had to do it.

“I cannot agree with that. I’ve met some great people over the years and there’s no way they were cheating.

“I’ve accomplished a lot, Frank O’Mara, Ray Flynn, Eamonn Coghlan, John Treacy, all those guys in the past. I can sleep very easily knowing that I and those guys never cheated and yet they won medals.

“He could come back and say ‘well, the times have changed’ and the times are faster but there’s guys out there that I know are not cheating and they’re running under 13 minutes for the 5K and are up there with the Africans.

“So there are people out there that do it without drugs and to infer that he had to do it just because everyone else was is not a just argument.

“The one logical argument from it is that he personally couldn’t compete on that level but to infer that everyone else is doing it is where I draw the line and disagree.”

Lombard’s doping admission will not hamper morale in the Irish Olympic camp, insists his middle distance team-mate Alistair Cragg.

Cragg, the fastest Irishman this year over 5,000 metres, was due to go to the line with Lombard in Athens in the heats on August 25, alongside national record holder Mark Carroll, in a strong Irish squad.

Now it will be a two-man team, Carroll and the South African-born NCAA champion.

“It’s a shame. I don’t really know Cathal too well, he seems quiet and shy to me,” Cragg said from his University of Arkansas base.

“It’s sad that an athlete has to feel that he has to do that to compete in our sport.

“But it doesn’t just stop with Cathal. There are others, I have no idea who, but I’m sure there are people out there that are taking stuff.

“I know it’s a lot of the sprinters that get caught but they are probably taking a greater variety of stuff. It’s sad it’s been brought into Irish athletics.”