JOE COMMISKEY chief medical officer of Ireland's Olympic team, was yesterday emphatic that reports of the rampant abuse of performance enhancing drugs in sport, are invalid in an Irish context.

As the furore in the aftermath of BBC Panorama's astonishing statement that the ratio could be as high as three out of four, rumbled on in Atlanta, Commiskey took time out in the Irish quarters in the Olympic village to dismiss the speculation as unfounded.

"The survey conducted world wide by the International Olympic Committee puts the figure at one per cent and I would be very surprised if the figures applicable to Irish athletes were out of line with that," he said.

"Most of the squad here are involved in international competition on a regular basis and as such would be subject to frequent testing, in and out of competition.

"I've conducted 20 random tests in the last three months and the circumstances of the testing were sufficiently varied to obviate the possibility of people beating the system.

"For example, I arrived unannounced to meet Sonia O'Sullivan and Cathy McCandless in Florida and almost certainly surprised Michelle Smith when I asked her to test immediately after she had appeared on a Late Late Show.

"In the course of 10 days, I made to flights, drove 500 miles, visited six competition sites, carried out 13 tests and the results in each instance were negative.

"When you've done all that, it's very difficult to listen to statements that the detection tests undertaken by the IOC through the various National Olympic committees are merely cosmetic."

Even that kind of attention to detail and the increasing use of random testing, known colloquially as knock and pee," has failed to convince many in a world in which the chemist is acknowledged to be always on step ahead of the doctor.

Twelve years ago in Los Angeles, the detection system was said to be so sophisticated that it could identify a spoonful of banned substance in a swimming pool.

The need to shred documents and destroy incriminating evidence after the Games gave the lie to that brash assertion but, nothing daunted, the organisers in Atlanta are still talking up the system to be used here.

After catching out so unsuspecting weight lifters for using steroids last year, three machines, known in the trade as gas chromatography/high resolution mass spectrometers, have been installed in Atlanta at a cost of £1 million.

"It's a big improvement," says Barry Sample, head of the laboratory which is handling Olympic testing. "Not only can we now detect much lower levels of steroids but we can go back farther to the point where people who stopped taking them four months ago are identifiable."

That statement, it has to be said, was made before the Australian sprinter, Dean Capobianco, one of those ensnared by the new spectrometers, had his ban quashed yesterday by the Australian Federation on the grounds that the testing apparatus was suspect.

There are those who submit that because of the huge commercial involvement in the modern Olympic movement, the IOC is dragging its feet on the drugs issue for fear of chasing off the corporate support needed to fund it.

That is not sustainable by evidence but the fact remains that the medical professional still hasn't come up with a means of detecting substances such as human growth hormone and that known as erthropoietin which increases red cells in the blood, thus increasing endurance.

Until such time as they do, there will be ongoing suspicions that cheating still pays in sport, if not to the same degree as that mentioned by Dr Michael Turner, a former British international runner, during the Panorama programme.

One of the immediate effects of the New York air disaster has been to take the Centennial Games off the front pages of American newspapers. It has also resulted in even tighter security in and around the Olympic complex.

That, it has to be said, is an imposition which has been willingly endured but one wonders how it will colour the picture today when temperatures are expected to rise sharply and the masses descend for the first time on the Olympic stadium for the official opening ceremony.