De Merode in Dublin for seminar

The Sport Against Drugs seminar, organised by Dr Joe Cummiskey of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) and due to be held in Dublin on Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th, will discuss the issue of over-the-counter drugs in one of the main lectures.

Prince Alexandre de Merode, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and chairman of the IOC medical commission, will be at the opening session. Other professionals, who specialise in the subject of drugs and sports, will also be in attendance. De Merode will be one of the principle figures in the IOC's world moratorium on drugs which will be held next February in Lausanne.

Over a dozen other contributors will debate many of the current drugs issues that have recently touched the public consciousness. The over-the-counter drugs problem arose as recently as last year in Ireland when two cyclists tested positive for pseudo-ephedrine, while at the Atlanta Olympics an Irish athlete also tested positive for the same substance, all of them claiming that they had innocently bought the products.

Dr Wade Exum, a psychiatrist and the US Olympic Committee's current director of drug control administration, will talk about the US drug control programme as well as the `S' personality types of athletes - those who are most prone to becoming abusers. Dr Exum was involved in testing Ben Johnson at the 1992 Olympics and is currently involved with the US anti-drugs campaign for the Sydney Olympic Games, one that will cost in excess of $1 million.

Professor David Cowan, head of the IOC-accredited laboratory in London, will talk on his laboratory findings over the last five years and the current technology for testing for drugs in sport. The centre at King's College has accreditation standard (M10), the highest standard for a testing laboratory. It was the first IOC-accredited laboratory to achieve this standard.

It is the current testing procedures and technology, used by IOC-accredited laboratories such as Kings College, that forms part of the challenge of Michelle de Bruin following her four-year ban from swimming by the international swimming federation FINA. De Bruin was banned for tampering with a urine sample.

Interestingly, Professor Cowan is also a member of FINA's task force, a body set up to advise the swimming federation on their efforts to control drugs misuse in the sport. King's College is also the laboratory which would have carried out tests on urine samples from the three unnamed Irish rugby players who tested positive last season.

Anabolic steroids, testing of athletes in and out of competition, hormone profiles in female athletes and the legal aspects of misuse of drugs in sport are also listed in the comprehensive schedule which begins on Friday morning at 10.30 a.m. Registration commences at 9.00 a.m. and the seminar closes on Saturday at 1.30 p.m.