The Irish Sports Council takes a strong stance on testing and I have been consistently drug tested for the past 12 years.
Let me shed some light on drug testing both here and abroad. Any athlete who is awarded an Irish Sports Council grant of €12,000 or more is automatically part of the anti-doping registered testing pool. Athletes who are dropped from funding often remain in the pool and athletes who are on the fringes of funding may also be added.
Internationally, different countries have vastly different testing standards. Athletics is considered a high-risk sport for performance enhancing drugs. In recent months Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay, two of the sport’s biggest stars, have both tested positive.
Globally, it is the role of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) to ensure the sport is as clean as possible. In Ireland, the anti-doping unit of the Irish Sports Council are responsible. Irish athletes are obliged to provide up-to-date details of their whereabouts for every day of the year on a quarterly basis. In Ireland we have a system with an extremely high standard of drug testing. If there were Olympic gold medals for testing, we would definitely get one. It is a system that leaves no stone unturned and puts huge resources behind it.
Recently, Dr Bill Cuddihy conducted a report on international drug testing with Ireland ranking fifth in the world in terms of frequency and type of tests carried out. There were 241 tests carried out by the anti-doping unit on athletics in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics. These were 144 urine tests, 48 blood tests and 49 blood tests for athlete biological profile data. The ABP is a way to monitor athlete’s blood over time to indicate changes from possible drug use. In 2012 the overall anti-doping budget in Ireland was €1.4 million.
I believe the testing I’m subjected to is rigorous. On any day of the year from 6am, three people may arrive at my home or training facilities for drug testing. I must give blood and urinate in a cup, while a drug tester observes, to ensure the urine is mine. Any medication or supplement I take must be disclosed in the paperwork. There is no annual limit to how many times an athlete can be tested. Determining how high-risk an athlete is for doping is a complicated process, which means it is extremely difficult for any athlete to make a case that they are being over-tested. Whether an athlete is recovering from injury, on training camp, close to retirement or racing fast times, the anti-doping unit may see potential for doping violations.
Source: Derval O’Rourke, Irish Examiner, 12/11/13
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