ATHLETICS: Without, it seems, much choice, Cathal Lombard intends to accept a two-year ban for using the performance-enhancing drug erythropoieten (EPO). Today the Cork athlete will travel home from Tirrenia, in Italy, where he had been due to complete his preparations for the Athens Olympics. Instead, Lombard is preparing to explain in detail how he climbed his way to the top of his event, the 10,000 metres.

In what has already brought serious damage to the reputation of Irish athletics, Lombard's use of EPO is set to shake the whole sporting public. Tomorrow he will meet officials from Athletics Ireland to answer formally the charge of failing a drugs test, which was carried out in Switzerland last month at his then training base in St Moritz.

From fresh indications last night, however, Lombard seems poised to reveal how and why he took EPO, which is banned in sport for its powerful endurance-boosting properties, especially beneficial for distance runners.

As a result, he will be facing a two-year ban from the date of the failed test, will be pulled from the Irish team headed to Athens and, perhaps more significantly, will lose all his credibility as an international athlete.

It became evident early yesterday that Lombard was considering a full disclosure of his EPO use. Patsy McGonagle, vice president of Athletics Ireland and spokesperson on the case since it was announced on Saturday afternoon, confirmed that the athlete had agreed to meet them tomorrow on his return home from Italy. The full details of his story are awaited with a sort of grim interest.

Speaking from Tirrenia yesterday evening, Lombard would only briefly respond to the revelation that he was intending to disclose the full details of his EPO use.

"It's something I'll do in my own time," he said. "But I just don't want to say anything further about it, just not at the moment.

"But you will get a full statement on my return home. I don't want to sound like I don't know what I'm doing, but it is a difficult time right now, and I want to get a few things clear in my head. I can't say anything more about it."

In the meantime, there have been several significant developments as to how and why Lombard was caught with EPO in his system. It is understood he had been ordering the product via the Internet, most likely from the US, where it is freely sold and distributed primarily as a treatment for various kidney diseases, but also for its more sinister properties as a performance-enhancing substance in sport.

There has also been the strong indication that Customs officials in either Dublin or Switzerland intercepted a delivery. As a result, the Irish Sports Council were contacted and the test was carried out by Swiss representatives of International Doping Tests and Management, the company contracted to carry out testing on behalf of the Sports Council.

But what is certain is that the Sports Council had, in fact, isolated Lombard for a more active pursuit of testing, primarily because of his rapid and quite astonishing improvements in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres over the past two summers. Without doubt his most dramatic improvement was over the 10,000 metres, an event in which he started the 2003 season with a best of 30 minutes 35.96 seconds.

That July he lowered it to 28:05.07 in Watford, England - an improvement of exactly two-and-half minutes. It was also the fastest time by an Irish man since Mark Carroll's national record of 27:46.82 set three years previously.

But if that wasn't startling enough, Lombard then came out at the start of this season and ran 27:33.53 when finishing third in the Cardinal Invitational meeting staged at the Stanford University in California. That took 13 second's off Carroll's record and also ensured Lombard's qualification for the Athens Olympics.

John Treacy, chief executive of the Sports Council, declined to make any formal comment on either the nature of the test or its possible outcome.

"We can't say anything further about it at the moment," he said, "but within the next day or so we do expect further details to emerge."

Other reaction from within Irish athletics has been indicative of the level of disgust brought about by Lombard's positive test. Former Irish international Noel Berkeley was just one of several athletes who offered so much support to Lombard during his more difficult years.

"I was absolutely shocked," said Berkeley. "And totally gutted. In fact, I felt like I'd been shot. It's very, very disappointing news, and, to be honest, I had a hard time believing it. You just didn't want to believe it."