I cheated once...

I cheated once. 

In a race.

I’m not proud of it.

It happened. And I have no defence.

I also have no way of undoing it.

***

It’s early 2004, and I coming into the second-best shape of my life, if there is such a thing. In a few weeks’ time I’ll make the Irish team for the World University Cross Country Championships (I don’t know it yet, but that’ll be the pinnacle of a protracted but unremarkable running career). I’m at Camp Hill in Liverpool, taking part in one of the Merseyside Colleges Cross Country League races, a low-key, mid-week, mixed-gender cross country series held in various parks across Merseyside throughout the winter. 

I’m doing well in the league. I’ve been mixing it with all but the top lads. I’ve even taking a few scalps along the way. 

But there’s a problem with today’s race. The course isn’t marked out as well as it should be. Someone’s forgotten to place a flag in the corner of a field. The volunteer helping direct the runners is timidly pointing us diagonally across the field to the other corner, cutting 50 or 60 metres off the course each time. 

But that’s fine. I’ve run this course before. I run the correct course. But those in front don’t know any better. They take the shortest route. Every time I start to make ground on the lads in front, they pull away on that part of the course. The competitor in me is a little bit frustrated. But there’s more to it than that. I start to feel a bit of a fool. A little miss do-gooder running the full course when it feels like nobody else is. On the final lap I cave. I follow the leaders.

But those behind me don’t. They’ve run the full race.

I don’t catch any of those in front over the final lap. And I more than keep my gap on those behind (no surprize given that I’ve run a shorter race than them). I finish seventh.

My friend finishes one place behind me. He is furious. He’s sure he could have beaten me today had I not cheated. He knows that I know the course and that I had no reason to cut that corner. But more importantly he expects more of me and I’ve let him down. I’ve let myself down.

I know I had the beating of him today. I’m sure of it.

But neither of us will really know. There is no way of knowing.

It’ll bother me for years to come. In the 2020s I’ll still be thinking about it. I may even write about it then!

***

I can never undo what I did that day. But I can learn from it. Honest and integrity have always been important to me, but in the aftermath of that race, I realised just how important they were, and why. 

But I also learned how easy it is, in the heat of the moment, to make a mistake. How easy it is to justify something, just because everyone else is doing it. And how difficult it can be to do the right thing when it looks to you as if you’re the only one doing so. 

Had there been someone there to disqualify me, I’ve have paid my price, and could have got on with my life. Had there been someone making sure we were on the right track, it would never have been an issue to begin with. All I had was a decent friend to call me out.

***

As I said, integrity is important to me. And I’ve written before about how the doping in sport and the not talking about it breaks my heart. That was a few years ago. Things have changed. We’ve had the introduction of super shoes, the Russians aren’t around, and everyone has been training really hard through the pandemic. Nobody dopes any more.

Wait, what? 

Think about it. 

We don’t need to be fully paid-up members of the ‘they’re all doping; cheating is human nature’ side to recognise that advances in technology or a lack of competition for a couple of summers didn’t suddenly make the performances you watch any more believable. 

“You know what, there’s shoes now that make me go faster; I’ll cut back on the EPO”, said nobody ever.

True, the old yardsticks are not relevant anymore (probably time to move to metres anyway), and we’ve had world records, or second-best performances, right across the track and field events. But the benefit that was denied for so long (why are you not respecting me and my performances; I still have to put on the shoes and run in them), are now being credited with improbably performance gains. And the resultant insatiable appetite for jaw-dropping performances has even allowed throwers – who obviously aren’t benefiting from carbon fibre plates - to make quantum leaps forward unquestioned. 

The performances you watch aren’t any cleaner that those you watched 5, 10 or 15 years ago, it’s just a bit more difficult to spot the dubious ones.

Just the way Seb would have wanted it.

***

And it’s not just that we’ve been gorging on performances which are likely tainted but which seem somewhat less outlandish simply because of their abundance. There’s also the enabling. A not insignificant number of individuals who have doped themselves (and served bans) or who have been involved in doping regimes, continue to coach in the sport. Yes, there are arguments about individuals serving their time and having a right to earn a living. But if we really care about this sport and its integrity, how can we employ doping offenders on six-figure salaries to coach impressionable young adults? Yes, they might get ‘results,’ but at what cost?

And why would anyone who believes in clean sport want to work or be part of a system with a tainted reputation? True, it might be difficult to find a role at the highest level that isn’t in some way linked to doping or doping suspicions, but if we don’t make a stand now, that’s only going to get more and more difficult to do.

For future generations the choice may be a simple one: do performance sport and dope; or don’t do it at all. Maybe we’re already at that point. We’ve got to do something now. And wouldn’t taking a stand against doping offenders coaching be a half-decent place to start? 

Either way we’ve got to show that we still care.

***

If I was a clean athlete, turning out top drawer performances at a serious rate, and people started to question my results, would I be hurt? Of course, I would. But if I was clean because it’s what I believe in – rather than just because I don’t want to be caught – then I’d be f*$king delighted that people still care; that whether or not my performances are clean still matters to people; that there is still some desire out there to clean up this sport and make it a better place for our children. 

While the questions might not make a cheating athlete repent, I’d hope that as a clean athlete any outpouring of actually giving a feck might just help me continue doing what I do clean. That it would encourage me to continue to avoid cutting those corners, irrespective of whether I know others are doing so, or presume that those who are not might be.

We will never catch all the cheats. But, for the sake of clean athletes everywhere, we’ve got to put everything we can into trying. But most of all we’ve got to make it easier to do the right thing by having some actual repercussions for not doing so.

***

I’m grateful to Neil for calling me out that day in 2004. He was right. I know that now. I knew it then.

But I also know I could have beaten him fairly that day.

I just wish I had.

Not so that I could recall it now. But so that I could have forgotten it almost two decades ago.

And so that I could say that everything I’ve achieved in this sport, I’ve achieved fairly.

What if?

Imagine you're an elite athlete. You may well be. Or a former one. Now imagine in ten years' time the doping authorities have developed new doping detections methods, re-tested every sample in their possession, and found numerous positive samples. You're a clean athlete, and always have been, so your samples come back clean. But those of your competitors are not. You're due a number of medal upgrades.

Are you:

(a) Pissed off that you've been cheated all along

or

(b) Delighted that they've finally done something about all the blatant cheating?

Truth is you've probably been secretly upgrading yourself all along. You always knew these athletes were doping, and that there was a chance that they might be caught. The positives haven't come as a shock. Nor should they, if you've been paying any attention at all.

But what if they started catching those with apparent immunity? Those that you thought might be doping, but weren't as blatant. Those that are also clearly talented and not purely the product of chemical enhancement. The golden guys and girls that put the sport in the spotlight. The big names. The big stars. The ones you never thought would be caught. How do you feel now? Are you pissed?

Now, what if it is someone you never suspected? Perhaps someone you even like. 

What if it's someone you're associated with?

How do you feel now?

Now, consider you're not clean. You might not be. They've finally hunted you down?

How do you feel now?

Doping: Ireland excelling at both hypocrisy and apathy

The date: 1st March 2008.

The venue: Queen’s University Playing Fields in Belfast.

The mood: sombre, yet defiant.

A portion of the sizable crowd that have gathered to watch the final stages of Senior Men’s race at the Irish inter-club Cross Country Championships boo as Leevale’s Cathal Lombard wins the title ahead of South-African born Alistair Cragg. The remainder watch quietly in disappointment.

Lombard is making his first appearance at a national level following a two-year doping ban for EPO use. The message the Belfast crowd deliver is loud and clear: Lombard is not welcome. He may have served his time in the eyes of anti-doping bodies, but not in the eyes of Irish athletics fans. They are a much tougher crowd to win around.

Lombard announced his retirement from athletics that afternoon. We’ll never really know if that was always his intention, or if the cold reception he received in Belfast (and at lower key races over the previous months) expediated his decision to walk away. Either way, he never ran competitively again. And few were disappointed to see the back of him.

***

Fast forward to November 2009 and news has just broken in Ireland that Spanish racewalker Francisco (Paquillo) Fernandez has committed an anti-doping rule violation. Over the coming months various versions of the story emerge. By the time the case is heard before the Court of Arbitration for Sport the fact that the Olympic and three-time world silver medallist was found in possession of multiple doping products, including EPO, previously purchased with intent to use, was no longer contested. Ban dates are the only thing debated in a case which we were originally led to believe was a set-up.

As the original news emerged in Ireland, national governing body officials were quick to distance themselves from the then shamed Spaniard, despite his close ties with Rob Heffernan and Olive Loughnane. Perhaps fearful of a backlash from the fans who were so vocally unforgiving in Lombard’s case, Patsy McGonagle, the then Athletics Ireland High Performance Committee Chairman, tried to reassure the Irish public whose taxes help fund high performance athletes, by stating that Heffernan and Loughnane were both largely based in Ireland and only had occasional contact with Fernandez. He added that "in the circumstances we must reassess that arrangement and we will definitely be making alternative technical coaching arrangements for our athletes".

Whatever those “alternative technical coaching arrangements” were, they never seemed to hinder Heffernan’s continued contact with the Spaniard, despite much denial along the way.

McGonagle, the Irish Olympic team manager, was again quoted in national newspapers in July 2012, playing down the link, following reports the continued association between Heffernan and the then-banned Spaniard when the Irish team had a training camp in Fernandez’s home town of Guadix. “There is no question and there never has been of Fernandez coaching Robert Heffernan - or any of the Irish walkers”, McGonagle states.

The same article also contains strong words from Liam O’Reilly, an Irish Olympic team coach and the camp leader during that Guadix trip. “I think what appeared was a terrible reflection on journalistic standards. All the positive effort and hard work has been ignored simply because he [Heffernan] knows somebody who has done something wrong…Then somebody comes along and tries to insinuate or imply that he is doing something wrong. I think that is unacceptable.”

Heffernan himself initially played down the link, despite much evidence to the contrary. As time passed, however, and perhaps sensing the changing mood of Irish athletics fans – a World title and an Olympic medal can work wonders – Heffernan and his cronies became less concerned about how the links were perceived, with regular social media posts of them training together. Fernandez, it appears, had fully morphed into Heffernan’s coach, even if his wife Marian was still being used as a cover – Athletics Ireland, perhaps, wouldn’t tolerate the name of a drug cheat next to one of their athletes.

Fellow Irish racewalkers Alex Wright, Brendan Boyce and Cian McManamon were also benefiting from the training opportunities that Fernandez was providing in Spain, and elsewhere, with Heffernan being credited as their coach.

And then, once it became clear that, bar a handful of voices, the Irish population no longer had the zero-tolerance to doping cheats they once had, the stage was set for Fernandez to finally receive the credit he deserved. In early August 2017 the Athletics Ireland website listed Pacquillo Fernandez as Wright’s coach on the team announcement for the World Championships in London later that month.

“Alternative technical coaching arrangements”, it seems, had little to do with protecting the integrity of the sport and everything to do with fobbing off the journalists and saying the right things to protect reputations until the whole issue blew over.

View this post on Instagram

Preparando la temporada... #ríodejaneiro2016 #Cork #Training

A post shared by Paquillo Frdez/Ex-atleta®️ (@paquillofernandez) on Nov 28, 2015 at 11:26am PST

And blow over it certainly appears to have done.

***

And in some ways, all of this is understandable. Heffernan and Fernandez were friends. Maybe Fernandez would never have used those products – he just fancied keeping them around, just in case he changed his mind again. And yes, he’s served his time. Maybe a two-year ban changes people. And maybe the reputations of Heffernan, Wright, et al., should not be tainted by who they choose to hang around with. I get all that. I even get that Fernandez may be a (mostly) good and nice guy.

And maybe, he is the best coach around.

I get all that. Even if I don't like it.

View this post on Instagram

The Best team! #Dudincetraining

A post shared by Paquillo Frdez/Ex-atleta®️ (@paquillofernandez) on Mar 21, 2016 at 9:56am PDT

What I don’t get is why we have to involve the children. And why Fernandez has to be turned into some sort of icon.

***

Just two weeks ago, Ray Flynn, who in 2016 stood for election as president of Athletics Ireland (a landslide defeat, incidentally), tweeted a photo of his group of young athletes from the ‘Sligo Academy of Racewalkers’ training with “the best coaches in Spain”; a photo in which Fernandez was, of course, front and centre.

Our group from Sligo Academy of Race Walkers training with the best coaches in Spain @PaquilloFrdez @SligoRunners @gaynorroddy pic.twitter.com/C5XGAywihh

— Raymond Flynn (@RAYMONDFLYNN1) October 31, 2018

To adapt an analogy Heffernan himself put forward: "You go to a nightclub in town, there’s going to be fellas in the cubicle next to you taking cocaine, but it doesn’t mean you do". But you wouldn’t parade your children (or worse still, someone else’s children) into that cubicle for selfies, and pin those fellas up as some sort of role models who your children should be privileged to meet.

***

Just over a decade on from that spring afternoon in Belfast, much has changed, it appears, in terms of attitudes to dopers in Ireland.

The Irish crowd have gone soft.

Maybe Lombard should have stuck around a little longer.

Maybe he should have offered to help coach some kids!

Yes, that might have changed the Irish public’s attitude towards him.

Things you need to know about supplements

Ever since a spate of nandrolone positives at the turn of the century were attributed to contaminated supplements, much has been written about the potential hazards of using sports supplements and the fact that – no matter what the label claims – there is no guarantee that any such product is free from banned substances.

Yet, the use of supplements has skyrocketed.

And contaminated nutrition supplements continue to be used as an excuse for failed dope tests!

Asafa Powell, Linford Christie, Yohan Blake, Brendan O’Sullivan… all innocent victims of contaminated nutritional supplements.

It seems that nobody intentionally dopes these days!

But they do intentionally take products which claim to improve their performance.  You can barely call yourself an athlete these days if your meals don’t come in powdered form, or your #gohardorgohome session isn’t fuelled by some form of stimulant.

So, just in case the message isn’t getting across, here’s a handy little reminder about sports supplements. Listen up Asafa et al., this may even learn something:

Manufacturers might not tell you the whole story

The main purpose of nutritional supplements is to make a shed load of cash for those who produce and sell them.

Fact!

Many of them don’t work at all.

And some of them do, but not because of their listed ingredients.

Let’s be clear - contamination is a bit of a misnomer. ‘Contamination’ is often intentional (i.e. products included but not declared on the label); the result of being produced in the same factory as products which contain banned substances; or because the product contains ‘natural’ ingredients which could contain just about anything.

Afterall, a manufacturer is not going to say: ‘look at this product; it probably contains banned substances’.

That’s not to say that sort of sale doesn’t happen too, but it’s a little less likely to happen on the high street.

For now at least.

And if you feel like I’m being melodramatic, check out the 2008 review article by Geyer et al. which highlighted the extent to which sports supplements contain products (often steroids) which are not included on the label

Included within that report is a 2005 study which showed that Vitamin C, Multivatimin and Magnesium tablets produced by a German manufacturer for sale in German and Spanish grocery and drug stores, were found to be cross-contaminated with the steroids metandienone and stanozolol (the Ben Johnson drug). It turns out that the company in question - Senesco-Pharma – produced these products on the same production line and at the same time as steroid products.

If it sounds performance enhancing, it may well be…

And not in a legal way!

Asafa Powell claimed, after he tested positive for the banned stimulant oxilofrine in 2013, that the source of the offending substance was a contaminated batch of the ‘legal’ supplement, Epiphany D1. Now, I’m not sure about you, but Epiphany doesn’t sound to me like it’s just an innocent whey power or a carbohydrate drink. It’s not just something that you take to ensure you’re meeting your daily requirements of vitamins and minerals.

Further inspection of the list of things Ephiphany D1 claims to improve (memory, learning ability, energy levels, verbal fluency, motor skills and oxygen supply to the brain, as well as protect brain cells against the effects of aging), and its long list of ingredients, would surely set alarm bells ringing. And at almost €60 for a 15 day supply, you’d almost expect there to be something banned in there.

Either way, with Powell claiming that he didn’t know it was his responsibility to check what his supplements contained and that all ingredients might not be listed on the label, perhaps it doesn’t even do what it claims, especially on the enhanced brain function side of things.

Last week Sport Ireland released details of boxer Michael O'Reilly’s adverse finding from 2016 and shock, horror, Falcon Lab’s Superdrive Testobooster Tech – the product O’Reilly blamed for the failed test – contained an anabolic steroid! Sometimes, when you least expect it, these things do exactly what they say on the tin.

Fat-burners and weight-loss supplements are best avoided

Superdrive Testobooster Tech was not the only Falcon Lab product blamed for a failed drugs test from 2016 – Kerry Gaelic footballer Brendan O’Sullivan claimed that fat-burning supplement Oxyburn Pro Superthermotech - produced by the US-based nutritional supplement company – was responsible for his anti-doping indiscretion.

And if Kolo Toure thought us anything, it’s that fat-burning supplements are best avoided. If they don’t contain banned amphetamines, stimulants or corticosteroids, they are likely to contain diuretics – banned masking agents – or just be a waste of money.

When did a few extra laps of the pitch become so unpopular!

No product is WADA or IOC or approved!

Yes, no matter what a manufacturer might claim, no produce has been approved as risk-free by any governing body. And what’s more, unlike medications, nutritional supplements aren’t even governed by… well, anybody really. They are, pretty much, a money-making free-for-all.

Informed-Sport is a risk-reduction initiative, whereby batches of products are independently batched tested for banned substances on the current WADA list. Athletes who feel the need to take supplements are strongly advised to ensure that anything they are taking is on the Informed Sport list.

But remember, there is still (and never will be) any guarantee that a product is completely safe to use.  Powell and Simpson may have managed to reach an out of court settlement with the manufactures of Epiphany D1 and get their bans reduced, but mere mortals are subject to strict liability and may get up to a four year ban for their stupidity. You are responsible for what’s in your body.

But, the good news is that, despite popular opinion, food doesn’t have to come in powder form

That doesn’t stop athletes tweeting photos of their protein recovery shake every five minutes. But don’t be fooled by the hype. They’re being paid by the manufacturers to advertise these products.

The athletes might even be eating proper meals away from the camera.

But yeah, if you want everything to be banana, strawberry or vanilla flavoured, with a slightly powdery texture, then sure, go ahead. Knock yourself out!

Doping in athletics breaks my heart, but ignoring doping damages it beyond repair

Recently, when people I’ve met through sport ask me what sport I used to compete in – a piercing dagger through the sporting heart of someone who still trains six times a week – I feel that they look at me disdainfully when athletics is my reply. One minute, in their mind, I’m a past sportsperson, a has-been, the next I’m an athlete in that filthy sport of track and field.

Ouch! The knockout blow!

But I can’t complain. I’ve long found it difficult to take certain sports seriously. As soon as someone tells me they’re a cyclist, or a weightlifter, or an MMA fighter, I become sceptical. I find it difficult to believe that there is a clean professional cyclist out there, that the gigantism change in the physique of rugby players in the professional era is all down to doing weights and eating protein, and that rowing, one of the hardest sports out there, is as clean as it’s made out to be.

In truth, I don't take track and field performances all that seriously myself. I watched very little of the athletics in Rio, and celebrated even less of it, choosing instead to spend the summer following domestic athletics action. And running a few races myself.

And when I see a relatively unknown distance runner, who lives in Spain and is engaged to a pro cyclist, knocking 83 seconds off her 10km personal best and in doing so qualifying for the Olympics, I find it difficult to believe.

And that is not her fault (presuming, as we should do, that she is innocent of any wrongdoing).

Nor is it mine.

This is what decades of doping, deceit and denial has done to our sport.

Russian scapegoats

Fortunately for Seb Coe, the IAAF, WADA, and all those who wish to portray the image that they are doing something about it, Russia’s luck finally ran out. The fact that harsh sanctions came seven years after seven Russian female athletes were suspended for allegedly switching their urine samples (out-of-competition samples collected in May 2007 did not match those provided by the same athletes at the World Championships in Osaka later that summer, something which wouldn’t have been able to happen under normal testing procedures) – indicates just how reluctant the authorities are to nip a problem in the bud.

While those watching the sport with open eyes were shouting ‘dirty cheating Russians’ at the TV, bribes were lining the pockets of those whose very job it was to run the sport, and delaying any serious action.

Along comes Seb Coe and, conveniently for him, but unfortunately almost a decade too late for the sport, it’s finally politically convenient to do something about the Russians.

Meanwhile, knowledgeable fans continue to shout ‘dirty rotten cheats’ at the TV, this time at the Turks, the Kenyans, the Jamaicans, the Ukrainians…

But it’s all ok. The Russians are not competing. And Seb Coe is cleaning up the sport.

That’s the same Seb Coe that in August 2015, before the true extent of Russian doping became public and just before he was elected as IAAF President, stated – in response to leaked blood data - that “The idea that my sport sat there either covering up wrongdoing or just being incompetent could not be wider of the mark.”

But that’s exactly what the sport has been doing for decades.

“We cannot be portrayed as a sport that is in any way dragging our heels,” added Coe.

But dragging their heels, they continue to do.

When will we finally admit that things are bad?

Paul McNamara, recently appointed as the new High Performance Director of Athletics Ireland, stated in an interview with Newstalk earlier this month that he thinks “our sport is cleaner than it has ever been before.”

Of course he did. That's what we're always being told. That’s the party line. London, too, was the cleanest Olympics ever. And look how that turned out!

In relation to the evolution of men’s 5000m and 10000m times, McNamara said "Arguably one could pick a date in 1995 that started the beginning of the EPO boom…. It changed the landscape and those performances skyrocketed for approximately 10 years to unfathomable levels. It’s dropped off drastically since. There’s an obvious reason for that.”

McNamara was, to be fair, arguing that it is again realistic for young Irish athletes to target success at a world level, which is, at the end of the day, his job. We’ll conveniently ignore our own doping record, that a number of our racewalkers continue to train in Spain with a convicted drug cheat, and the fact that some of our most successful distance athletes achieved their success right in the middle of that 10 year period.

But most importantly, we’ll ignore the fact that those comments came just a few days after a pair of Kenya females went through the first 10k of a half marathon in a mind-blowing 30:02 minutes - a new world record for the distance – before one of them brought the world record for the 21.1km distance under 65 minutes for the first time (and ironically made Radcliffe’s world marathon mark look much less of an outlier).

The women’s 10,000m final in Rio made the storylines of a whole range of Disney movies positively plausible by comparison. The recent World Cross Country Championships – while entertaining, engaging and inspiring as a spectacle – were preposterous on a performance level. The world records of those suspicious Chinese athletes continue to fall. And Gulnara Galkina’s untouchable world steeplechase record was finally smashed last summer, by a far inferior technician.

And that’s without the dirty cheating Russians.

The 1990s may well have been the time for EPO fuelled records on the men’s side, but we can hardly put the recent evolution of records on the women’s side purely down to improved training practices and increased opportunities for females.

The Ben Johnson effect

I’m far too young to remember Ben Johnson running in Seoul. But I am old enough to have watched the footage several times since. And I know that observers back then wouldn’t have needed a positive test result to know that he was drugged up to the eyeballs. But that’s easy to say in hindsight.

How many Ben Johnson-esque performances have I witnessed since? How many world records and Olympic wins will I look back on in 10 or 20 years’ time and say, “Why, yes, of course she was doping; anyone could see that”? How many of today’s too-good-to-be-true performances will, down the road, be just that?

And, of course, Ben Johnson wasn’t the only athlete cheating in that 100m final in 1988. He was just the one they most wanted to catch. He was the Russia of his day. Catch him and it looked like they cared about keeping the sport clean.

Can we believe any of what we see?

Are there any clean athletes out there?  Yes, of course there are. I am one. And while I realise that my achievements barely register as performances, I know that there are athletes who work harder, are far more talented and have better race heads than I do, so I know that there are athletes at a higher level than me training and competing clean. Of that I am sure.

But it’s impossible to say exactly what is clean and what isn’t. I’ve heard it argued that Linford Christie’s athletes are definitely clean, that such-and-such is too nice to dope, and that thing-a-me-bob was an outstanding junior and junior athletes just don’t dope. And all this while steroid use among the gym-going public is at epidemic levels, EPO is freely available on the internet and amateur athletes, with nothing significant to gain are being caught by the apparently underfunded anti-doping authorities.

It’s dangerous to tar all athletes from a certain country, training set-up or sport with the one brush – I’d hate for my performances, no matter how menial, to be judged by the actions and hypocrisy of my fellow countrymen.

And we’ll probably never know just how many top athletes are doping.

But, what we do know is that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is!

It would be nice if those in charge of the sport finally acknowledged that.