Cian O'Connor Saga: Cian O'Connor became Ireland's favourite sporting hero of 2004 when, on August 27th, he was crowned Olympic showjumping champion.
As the only Irish medallist from the Athens Games and Ireland's first Olympic medallist in equestrian sport, the articulate and charismatic 24-year-old was swamped by the media.
But a media feeding frenzy broke out six weeks later when O'Connor and his veterinary surgeon, James Sheeran, released a statement through the Irish Equestrian Federation revealing that O'Connor's gold-medal horse Waterford Crystal had tested positive for unnamed prohibited substances.
O'Connor avowed his innocence but, two days later, admitted that another of his horses, the mare ABC Landliebe, had also tested positive, in Rome in May for one of the same sedatives that had been found in Waterford Crystal's Athens sample. The substances were still not identified.
The flood of media interest heightened in November when the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) admitted that Waterford Crystal's urine B-sample, sent to Britain for confirmatory analysis, had been stolen en route to the laboratory. That news had barely been digested when the Irish Federation revealed the following day that its offices in Kill, Co Kildare had apparently been broken into overnight and files relating to the ABC Landliebe case had been taken.
Hours later, the two substances found in ABC Landliebe's sample were named on RTÉ as the human anti-psychotic drug Fluphenazine and a drug used for hypertension, Guanabenz. A week later, confirmatory analysis was carried out on Waterford Crystal's remaining blood B-sample in a New York laboratory and O'Connor himself named the substances as Fluphenazine and Zuclopenthixol (another anti-psychotic drug), but reiterated that the substances had not been administered to enhance performance.
With a confirmed positive result from Waterford Crystal, O'Connor was given 15 days to produce a written submission explaining the presence of the banned substances. But a December 2nd deadline was extended by the international governing body to December 13th and has now been further extended to January 7th to allow O'Connor's legal team time to prepare his defence. O'Connor has requested an oral hearing before the FEI's judicial committee, which is expected to take place a fortnight after the full case file has been compiled.
Far from the story quietening down, another controversy broke loose when O'Connor was presented with the International Rider of the Year award at the Showjumpers' Ball in Co Kildare on December 19th. Two leading Irish internationals, Peter Charles and Billy Twomey, threatened to resign their membership of the Showjumpers' Club in protest at the award, but the net result was that the club was left rudderless when the chairman and vice-chairman both resigned three days before Christmas.
Grania Willis