Turnbull test: The background

The Northern Ireland Athletics federation have announced their full support for Belfast athlete Gareth Turnbull. While declincing to comment further, certain elements of the case were revealed yesterday. What is known is the 27-year-old was tested out-of-competition at his Loughborough base in England on September 30th of last year, having just returned from a holiday in Spain. He wasn't in hard training at the time, but his testosterone level had an alleged reading of between 5.8-5.9.

Because testosterone occurs naturally and daily levels can fluctuate, a threshold is set, above which the athlete is deemed to be "using" testosterone or a similar anabolic substance. The threshold is based on testosterone/ epitestosterone levels, which are normally around 1:1. For years a ratio of 1:6 (or a level of 6) was accepted as evidence of illegal testosterone use, but two years ago the World Anti Doping Agency (Wada) reduced that to 1:4. Turnbull is also reported to have undergone several other tests since last September, with testosterone levels back between 1.6 and 1.8. Obviously some monitoring was taking place, essentially to establish what his normal levels were, but eventually the illegal threshold level had to be acted on.

Last Saturday Turnbull easily won the Northern Ireland 1,500 metres title in Belfast in 3:49.54. He spoke with local journalists, and after admitting another period of over-training in the US earlier in the year, he was confident of qualifying for the European Championships in Gothenburg in August.

All that changed at 3.30pm on Monday when Turnbull was notified of the findings. His family hired a legal team that includes solicitor Andrew Coonan, who worked with rider Cian O'Connor after the doping controversy involving the horse Waterford Crystal at the Athens Olympics.Turnbull has requested the B-sample be tested, but in the meantime he is provisionally suspended.

Turnbull ticks very few of the boxes associated with drug use. He hadn't shown any major improvement in recent years, his form was never suspicious, and as a somewhat burly distance runner the last thing he would have wanted to take was an anabolic steroid. The big problem is there is rarely any arguing with a positive test.