One of the greatest threats to sport and to commercial partnerships with it is the shadow of drug abuse.  The Irish Sports Council is however highly regarded in terms of its education and testing programmes, the results of which for 2012 were published yesterday.
It shows that there were nine violations discovered during 2012.  Four of these were for use of Cannabis, four for a banned substance methylhexanamine, and one for a coach found to be administering drugs to his brother.
The discovery of the banned steroid use came after targeted intelligence highlighted abuse  in a Tug of War team.  Bans of 18 months each were handed down to three individual competitors.  The other steroid abuse was in soccer resulting in a ban of eight months.
The four infractions of the ban on cannabis use resulted in bans ranging from seven weeks to nine months in cycling, motorsport and weightlifting.
The longest ban was handed out to boxing coach Martin Sweeney for administering a banned substance to his brother.
There was an increase in the number of blood tests done, in line with best practice from the World Anti Doping Agency who had senior officials present in Dublin yesterday for talks with Ministers arising out of Ireland’s EU Presidency.
Athletics, Cycling, Rugby, Swimming and triathlon accounted for the bulk of the 133 blood tests carried out during the year and there is expected to be a higher concentration on team sports for this in 2013 and beyond.
The transparent publication of test results suggests that Ireland does not suffer from the same level of abuse highlighted in last week’s report on Australian sport by that nation’s crime commission but with international pressures to perform increasing the road ahead is a long and winding one.
Read our recent Sport for Business review of how Irish cycling was likely to be affected by the Lance Armstrong drugs scandal.
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