Hendricken seeking legal advice

ATHLETICS: Geraldine Hendricken will be requesting the immediate opening of the B-sample from her failed out-of-competition doping test, which was revealed to contain traces of the banned anabolic steroid, nandrolone. She will also be investigating the exact contents of all the legal food supplements that she has admitted to have freely used over the past year.

In a clear indication of her intent to explore every possible explanation for her failed test, Hendricken also sought legal advice yesterday afternoon. She said afterwards that she would be making "no further comment on the advice of her solicitor, and pending an investigation of the B-sample and the food supplements".

The Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) confirmed that Hendricken had until Friday to request the opening of the B-sample - seven days after notification was first sent to her regarding the contents of the A-sample from the same out-of-competition test taken at her home in Carlow on February 10th. The AAI were notified earlier last Friday that the Irish Sports Council's anti-doping programme had found the A-sample to contain illegal levels on nandrolone.

According to AAI team manager Patsy McGonagle, who is also acting as the AAI spokesperson on the matter, the entire process is now likely to take several more weeks. The executive officers of the AAI have also called a meeting for later this week to discuss the process in more detail, and have already sought advice on the matter from the IAAF anti-doping officers in Monaco.

"We intend to work through this carefully and correctly no matter how long it takes," said McGonagle. "I have already stated our due care of the athlete, and we intend to stand by that. And whatever happens next we intend on dealing with it as best we can."

As of last night the AAI had not received any contact from Hendricken on the matter. Since the athlete has seven days to respond to the notification it will also be Friday before her temporary suspension is formally announced. Assuming she contacts the AAI before Friday, it will then take two to three weeks to set a date where the B-sample can be examined. If the athlete does not contact the federation within seven days then the case is assumed not to involve any appeal.

There are currently no laboratories in Ireland accredited to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), so all the Sports Council's doping tests are sent to London for analysis.

There has been no known high-profile case in the history of drug testing where the B-sample differed in any significant way from the A-sample, but what is crucial to the outcome of the tests on the B-sample are the levels of nandrolone revealed.

So far the level of nandrolone's by-product 19-norandrosterone revealed in the A-sample is unknown, nor how far it exceeded the permissible amounts as established by the IOC (for men, 2 ng per ml of urine, and for women 5 ng per ml of urine). In other words it is still unclear whether Hendricken's sample could be refereed to a borderline case or not.

Clearly a borderline case, where the levels are marginally illegal, is easier to defend. It would also add some significant weight to any argument that her positive test was the result of her unwittingly consuming a contaminated food supplement, or the result of a food supplement combined with heavy exercise. Both those instances have been revealed to create possible "false positives", or situations where the positive test was not the result of actually consuming the anabolic steroid.

Other appeals involving nandrolone have centred on the validity of the testing process. Former Olympic sprint champion Linford Christie, whose drug test in 1999 revealed nandrolone levels 100 times above the legal limit, was subsequently cleared by UK Athletics when part of his appeal proved that his samples had not been properly refrigerated.

There are, however, no reasons to suggest any problems with the test taken from Hendricken, which is now known to have been carried out by Al Guy, one of the most experienced doping officers with the Irish Sports Council.

It was Guy who also carried out the test on Olympic swimming champion Michelle de Bruin at her home in January of 1999.

While Hendricken has admitted to using food supplements as part of her 1,500-metre training over the past year, she has also been careful to check the contents to ensure they contained nothing illegal.

"I check everything I take to make sure it's clean," she said on Monday, "and I would never take anything illegal."

The next step will be to send those supplements to a laboratory for a full examination. A detailed study carried out by the IOC last year revealed that 14 per cent of food supplements they tested contained banned substances, including nandrolone.

In the wake of that study several sporting federations warned all athletes against the use of all such food supplements.

One of the few certainties in cases involving nandrolone is the stance taken by the IAAF - who say that an athlete is ultimately responsible for the nandrolone that appears in their system, no matter how it got there.

A spokesperson for the IAAF said yesterday that at this point Hendricken's case appeared no different, and ultimately that would mean a two-year suspension.