Hendricken on track for a career change
The Carlow athlete took her career to a new level with a string of personal best performances last year and was hoping for more of the same when her dreams were shattered by the news that she had failed an out-of-competition drugs test.
Within days of that test she was tested again at the Indoor Championships of Ireland in Belfast and the results came back negative to reinforce her claims that the positive test was a result of something she had taken unknowingly in a nutritional supplement.
Her claims were further strengthened last month when Dr Conor O’Brien, who heads the Irish Sports Council’s Anti Doping Committee, revealed a survey had indicated one in five people who take supplements could expect to test positive.
Dr O’Brien warned it was not just the ingredients in the supplement that posed a threat but that they could be contaminated by the equipment used to process other substances.
Unfortunately she had completed the supplement she had been taking prior to the positive test and when she submitted another batch for analysis it was found to be OK.
She is still awaiting news of the hearing which could clear her or at least reduce the two-year ban.
“I had been hoping that it would all have been done and dusted by now or at least by the end of May,” she said.
In the meantime she has been training as hard as ever and is ready to step on to the track should she be cleared.
“I am doing speed sessions on the cinder track in Carlow,” she said. “I would say I am six weeks ahead of last year’s schedule. If I was to step on to the track tomorrow I am in shape to run 4:08. That’s how advanced I am right now.”
She has done all she can to clear her name and all she wants is a sympathetic hearing if nothing else.
“It is all so frustrating. I just don’t know what is happening or when this thing will be over. I just want to get back running again and I know that, no matter when it is, I will run again,” she said. “The worst-case scenario is two years but I am hoping for the best.”
But, in the throes of her desperation, she has begun to expand her horizons. She has always had a passion for horses. As a child she jumped at gymkanas and her first summer job was with P. J. Finn on The Curragh. She later rode out for Jim Bolger.
While teaching and running she also bred horses, broke them and sold them but now she has been exploring new frontiers and has set herself a new challenge.
“I used some of my Grand Prix money to buy two yearlings - Oscar Schindler fillies - and I want to train them myself,” she said. “During the summer I will do the course in The Curragh to qualify for a trainer’s permit. I am looking forward to that.”
Patsy McGonagle, vice-president of the Athletics Association of Ireland, said no definite date had been set for the arbitration hearing.
“We are in the process of putting an arbitration committee together at the moment,” he said. “She will be entitled to legal representation at the hearing and she can be present herself.”
Meanwhile, Roisin McGhettigan (Finn Valley), a student at Providence College, knocked 10 seconds off her national steeplechase record with a 9:58.26 run in the Big East meet in Connecticutt over the weekend.
It will be good news for the Irish selectors in advance of naming the team for the Europea Cup for women in Finland on June 21-22 with the men in action in Denmark the same weekend.
Mary Cullen, from Sligo, who posted her qualifying standard for the European Under-23 championships a week earlier, improved her 5,000m time to 16:05.82 at the same meet.
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