Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BRENDAN DRUG COST BOLT GOLD AT BEIJING 2008
A STIMULANT which cost Usain Bolt an Olympic gold medal is at the heart of Kerry footballer Brendan O’sullivan’s failed drug test. Sport Ireland confirmed yesterday that O’sullivan was eventually given a 21-week ban, which he has now served fully, after testing positive for methylhexaneamine, also known as MTA, following last year’s League final loss to Dublin. It’s a substance for which Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter (above) tested positive when a sample taken following the 4 x 100m relay at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was retested by the IOC. As a result the team, which included Bolt, was stripped of the gold medal last January, reducing his individual tally from nine to eight. The stimulant is often associated with caffeine supplements and it’s believed this is how it came to be in the player’s system. Though Sport Ireland said in a statement released yesterday that O’sullivan “bore no significant fault or negligence” and that the violation came as a result of a “contaminated product”, meaning that MTA wasn’t listed as an ingredient. This is essentially why the Valentia man wasn’t landed with the standard four-year ban for a doping violation. He was initially banned for seven months before having it reduced to six months and then 21 weeks on appeal. The Irish Anti-doping Disciplinary Panel has still to issue a report on the O’sullivan case though Sport Ireland’s statement went some way towards clearing up why it has dragged on over a 13-month period. Indeed, O’sullivan appeared for Kerry against Donegal in February and served his suspension either side. The statement read: “Sport Ireland accepted that it was a contaminated product case, that Mr O’sullivan bore no significant fault or negligence and reduced the applicable sanction to seven months. “Mr O’sullivan declined to accept the specified sanction and on January 5, 2017 the matter was referred to the GAA Antidoping Committee. “The GAA Committee imposed a period of ineligibility of six months on Mr O’sullivan following a hearing on February 13, 2017. “Mr O’sullivan appealed that decision to the Irish Sport Antidoping Disciplinary Panel which imposed a period of ineligibility of 21 weeks on Mr O’sullivan following a hearing on March 30, 2017. “Mr O’sullivan was provisionally suspended from the May 13, 2016 to the July 28, 2016, a period of 11 weeks before his suspension was lifted by the Chair of the Disciplinary Panel because the violation was likely to have involved a contaminated product. “The remaining 10 weeks of ineligibility commenced on the 26th February 2017, the date of his last participation in the Kerry panel.”