Turnbull pays high price for something he didn't do

On Athletics:There's lots of talk these days about getting to Beijing for next summer's Olympics, about the effort and sacrifices involved, and it's hard to imagine anyone - with the possible exception of three slightly crazy cyclists from Dublin (of which more presently) - more determined to complete that journey than the Belfast athlete Gareth Turnbull.

Turnbull is targeting the 1,500 metres and may seem an unlikely contender for Olympic selection considering he hasn't run a decent time in two years. Yet he ran 3:36.60 four years ago - the exact qualifying time for Beijing - and his determination shouldn't be underestimated, given all that he has endured of late.

It's now over two years, October 2005, since Turnbull took an out-of-competition drugs test he never expected to hear anything more about. But he did - some nine months later - when the Irish Sports Council informed him the same test showed marginally raised levels of testosterone, possibly enough to warrant a two-year ban.

So began the lengthy, costly and somewhat bitter battle to clear his name, which appeared to end in October 2006, when, a full year after the test, an independent disciplinary panel accepted that Turnbull's slightly elevated levels were brought about solely by natural causes, thus clearing him of any wrongdoing.

By then Turnbull had remortgaged his house in Loughborough, England, with his father providing further financial and emotional support.

That forced the Irish Sports Council to overhaul its anti-doping rules and award costs in Turnbull's case, a decision on which was announced in March of this year.

Again, nine months later, Turnbull is still awaiting closure.

The details, obviously, are off the record, but it is known the Turnbull costs just exceeded the six-figure threshold, while the Sports Council reckon they should be slightly less.

To those who knew him, Turnbull was innocent, yet the Sports Council felt compelled to press charges because of the system. In other words, the drug testers, once they feel they have a case against you, operate along the lines of guilty until proven innocent. It has to work that way, but the problem is even after total innocence is established the association with guilt can linger.

For Turnbull that was only part of the problem, as the past two years also tested his great love of running, which since his earliest years had dominated his life and turned him into one of Ireland's most exciting distance talents.

Only now is that love fully rekindled, as Turnbull revealed with his second place at last Sunday's National Intercounties cross-country championships.

"I'm more or less out the back of it now," he says, "but I have to say the past year was almost worse than the year before. It really was almost like being banned for two years, just in trying to get over the whole thing. You have the year when it happens, and you're fighting it, in adrenaline mode. Then that dies down, and you're coming to terms with it.

"It's not as serious as a grief, but it was almost like a process of feeling sorry for yourself, then moving on. My only thoughts now are towards running the Olympic qualifier for the 1,500 metres, and anything that gets in the way of that has to go.

"That's really what kept me going. It was like, why give in? Why let people take that away from me? I believe I'm talented enough, that it's doable.

"All that happened did force me to question the sport, to a degree . . . Of course I was wondering why I should go on. But then you think of all the people that stuck by you.

"I did get very unmotivated this summer, just didn't want to do it. But it came back . . . And I do feel much better now."

He's back living in his native Belfast, mainly because of financial circumstances: "Not being able to run for two years meant I lost everything, all my funding. That's the kind of stuff that still frustrates me, that I still had to face the consequences of something I hadn't done. But as yet I still haven't received a single penny in costs.

"I have to be careful about what I can say, but we're still in a process of dialogue, to put a big, rubber-stamped 'closure' on it. I'm optimistic that will happen, but until then I can't put it totally behind me.

"I don't like keeping my mouth shut either, because I feel I should be able to say what I want to say. It's just sensitive at the moment."

So to those three slightly crazy Dubliners - Paul Ryan, Mark Donlon and Conor Rowan - who since September have been cycling toward Beijing for two charitable causes (ARC Cancer Support Centre and UCD Volunteers Overseas) and also to arrive in time to support their good friend David Gillick, Ireland's Olympic qualifier over 400 metres.

Just this week they completed stage one of the 11,184-mile, 334-day trip by traversing Europe, and their regular journey updates can be found on www.biketobeijing2008.com