IOC medical director slams Sheahan defence

THE medical director of the International Olympic Committee has poured cold water on a potential defence by Ireland and Munster hooker Frankie Sheahan that excess levels of the banned drug salbutamol was caused by stress and dehydration.

Referring to the circumstances which led to Sheahan’s two-year ban, Patrick Schamasch was quoted yesterday as saying he doubted whether stress and dehydration could change the concentration of the player’s urine and alter levels of a drug in the system. He claimed that part of Sheahan’s defence was that, as far as the IOC was concerned, athletes with a waiver to use salbutamol as part of asthma relief were not subject to a threshold once it could be proven the drug was not taken in tablet form.

“It is not true to say that the levels are not relevant once inhalation is proven,” Schamasch said. “The levels are always relevant. If you have a case in which an athlete who is permitted to take salbutamol produces a level that’s over the permitted threshold, then it is up to the athlete to prove that such a level may be reached within a normal respiratorial therapeutic framework.”