Hendricken begins defence fightback
In a brief statement last night, the 1,500m runner said she would be travelling to London to be present for the examination of the second sample. She also confirmed she will be sending her vitamin supplements away for immediate investigation.
The declaration came after a day spent with her legal advisers in Dublin. It is believed Hendricken will base her plea of innocence against charges of a positive drug test on the belief the vitamin supplements she was taking may have been contaminated.
Hendricken's test, taken on February 10, allegedly revealed traces of the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone, which speeds up the process of muscle building and recovery.
The 32-year-old Carlow athlete will be entitled to an oral hearing and is awaiting the results of testing on the 'B' sample from the same test.
While she was making no public comment yesterday on the advice of her solicitor, it is understood her response to the Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) will be based on a vehement denial of any wrongdoing.
Hendricken believes she has been very thorough in checking her supplements and will argue these could have become contaminated.
The AAI has vowed to support Hendricken in whatever bid she makes to clear her name.
"Let's not forget there is a human person at the centre of this story and at the end of the day, we have to be supportive of the athlete," said the association's vice-president, Patsy McGonigle last night.
The Carlow athlete, who was "stunned" when told she had tested positive for nandrolone, has until 12 noon on Friday to come back with a response to the registered letter which she received yesterday.
"I know what nandrolone is but I never have taken it and never would," she said pointing out she took nutritional supplements but was careful as to what they contained.
McGonigle pointed out Hendricken will stand suspended from 12 noon on Friday if she does not give a reasonable explanation for what has happened.
"An arbitration council will be set up and she will be afforded an oral hearing," he said. "She will have the opportunity to call for the B sample to be opened and she will be entitled to legal representation.
"We have been in touch with the IAAF's medical people as well. Every avenue will be explored."
A close Carlow friend of Hendricken's, Paul Donaghy, says the athlete had often said she would be an obvious target for anti-doping testers after her remarkable return to full-time athletics last year.
Donaghy, who has covered her career closely as sports editor of the Carlow Nationalist, said: "There will be a lot of people in Carlow and beyond hoping the B sample doesn't prove positive or that there was contamination. I personally would have never have thought it of her.
"We did speak about it (her rapid improvement) jocosely and I would say to her 'what are you on?' and she would reply 'you must be joking, I'm a prime target for testing'.
"I do know she had been tested three or four times prior to this one and when you start posting those times you're the first person they're going to look at. They're not going to look at Sonia O'Sullivan or Paula Ratcliffe but Geraldine came out of nowhere in five months.
"When she concentrated on running again back here at the start of last year her times kept coming down and people kept raising their eyebrows every time I wrote something about it. But all she puts it down to is a change of training, change of diet, training with men and the fact she picked an event she feels she should have been running since she was a college student.
"She's close to 33 years of age now and started running again last January 12 months and doing a bit of serious training. The reason was, and I believe her, was that she had a masters degree in her pocket, a job as a teacher in Dublin and couldn't really train up there because she was getting home too late.
"She got a job down here and that allowed her to live in Carlow and get her back into training six or seven times a week.
"So when she started to train for the 1,500m she devised her own programme as a sports science graduate that's her skill and she told me she changed her diet completely and started training with male middle distance runners, because she wasn't getting pulled along fast enough. But she had no coach."
While he would not comment, McGonigle admitted there was always the possibility the AAI could decide to go in a similar direction to UK Athletics in previous cases and disagree with the regulatory findings on controversial supplements.
Nandrolone has been at the centre of a plethora of controversies in recent years. Several athletes like Linford Christie, Merlene Ottey and the 1992 Olympic 5,000m champion, Dieter Baumann, were involved and they subsequently had their bans lifted.
UK Athletics baulked at IAAF findings by clearing their athletes of any wrongdoing.
Nandrolone is an illegal performance-enhancing steroid and as a substance produced naturally in the body, acceptable levels in the system have been set by regulators.
It is the waste product, 19-norandrosterone, that shows up in the urine specimen but levels can be raised by the use of simple protein supplements and tests have also shown that dietary supplements in conjunction with increased levels of exercise can produce a positive test reading.
A major problem is that some food supplements contain allowable steroids which the body readily converts into the banned nandrolone.
For men the limit is 2 nonagrams of the waste product per millilitre of urine. For women, the limit rises to 5ng/ml. Studies have shown the average person can have a small but significant level in their bodies 0.6 nanograms per millilitre of urine.
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