Olympic gold medal winner Cian O'Connor protested his innocence last night, despite allegations on RTÉ that both his Olympic horse Waterford Crystal and his other mount, ABC Landliebe, had tested positive to a human drug used to treat schizophrenia.
"I have proclaimed my innocence from the outset and I reiterate that at this stage," the showjumper said last night.
The 24-year-old Co Kildare rider said he was delighted that the International Federation for Equestrian Sports was continuing with the Waterford Crystal medication case, as this would give him a chance to prove his innocence.
It had looked likely that the case would collapse when it emerged on Monday that the B sample from Waterford Crystal had been stolen on October 21st en route to a laboratory in England. However, it is now known that the stolen package contained only a urine sample. A blood sample from the horse has now been sent to Hong Kong for confirmatory analysis.
The blood testing will be carried out at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Laboratory. O'Connor said yesterday he had arranged for his witnessing analyst to be present at the testing in Hong Kong on Friday.
The case was further complicated yesterday with news that the Equestrian Federation of Ireland's offices in Kill, Co Kildare, were broken into on Monday night.
Gardaí were called to the offices at Kildare Paddocks shortly before 8.00 a.m. yesterday and, following forensic examination, it was revealed that documents relevant to the O'Connor case had been stolen. Shortly afterwards RTÉ television reported that a document had been anonymously faxed into the Donnybrook newsroom with details of drugs found in the sample from the horse ABC Landliebe.
Police in Cambridgeshire confirmed that Waterford Crystal's B sample was signed for in the driveway of the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory (HFL) in Newmarket but never got any further.
"My understanding is that the parcel was sent from Paris and arrived in the UK," a spokesperson for Cambridgeshire police said. "It was delivered to the driveway and signed over to someone who said they were working for the lab, but the lab said they didn't get the parcel. The package has been traced as far as the driveway of the HFL but was not received by the HFL."
The sample had been despatched from the central testing laboratory in Paris to the HFL in Newmarket by courier.
A source at the Laboratoire des Course Hippiques in Paris, which shipped the sample to the HFL, said yesterday that this was not the first time the laboratory had encountered problems with its courier system. -"We've had problems with invoicing some products in the past and with them not arriving," the source said.