Drug cheats on rise as results determine funding

PARALYMPICS 2004: The notion of cheating in the Paralympics is no less foreign than it was in August for the Olympic Games. In the power-lifting arena, positive drug results have begun to emerge, reports Johnny Watterson in Athens

Up to yesterday 529 tests had been conducted, resulting in seven adverse findings. Two were from out-of-competition and five from in-competition tests. Any notions that Paralympians were less inclined to cheat or that drug testers were more lenient clearly don't hold.

Why they might be tempted to cheat is more interesting to ponder. What a Paralympic gold medal is worth is difficult to evaluate. For many it means the continuance of government funding and for others opportunities to make money. Amputee Marlon Shirley, the 100-metre gold medallist, is the corporate face of Paralympic sport in the US while Tanni Grey-Thompson is one of Britain's most successful wheelchair athletes. They are in a very real sense professional.

Shirley has a string of corporate- sector sponsors, while Grey-Thompson has a commercial agent. Shirley was quoted as saying he earned a good six-figure salary last year from sponsorship.

From the Irish athletes' point of view, medals will certainly make lives more comfortable leading up to the Beijing Games in 2008. At the upper end of the scale, 400m runner Conall McNamara and swimmer David Malone can expect to draw down the maximum Government grant of €30,000 a year for four years. They may also be able to dip into the Beijing Enhancement Programme, another pot of Government money used for such things as warm-weather training. Derek Malone, who qualified last night for the T38 400m final with a personal best 54.35 seconds, took time to train in South Africa this year with Government assistance.

"What happens is that all the performances here will be quoted when the athletes are applying for Government funding," says Irish Sports Council Communications manager Paul McDermott.

"The fact is that the carding scheme does acknowledge performance. The more elite an athlete is, the more funding they need to compete at events and to train full time."

In Britain the support from their World Class Performance Programme is worth about £20,000 a year to athletes, while individual awards on top of that average around £14,000 a year.

The British team management has been very clear about the squad's purpose in Athens and that is to win as many medals as possible. They have to go back and make a case to the UK Lottery for funding and the athletes have been told in no uncertain terms they have to perform to justify the funding.

How the Estonian, Syrian, Iranian and Slovakian athletes, the most recent to be caught by the International Paralympic Committee (IOC), benefit from winning medals is more difficult to assess. The punishment for their infractions, however, is easy. Estonian power lifter Aleksandr Koroljov was disqualified and banned for two years; Syrian lifter Younes Youssef lost his bronze medal and received a two-year ban, while Slovakian cyclist Juraj Petrovic goes home without his silver medal.

Track and field events and swimming continue to draw the most interest here and try as they might to keep the Paralympic Games inclusive of everyone with a disability, an elite has been established. The irony is that as Paralympic athletes improve and become more professional the rewards become greater and cheating becomes more tempting.