Sunday 23 September 2018

Doping(again)




The less you look for bad news, the less bad news you will 
have to publish(or worry about having to publish).

Following on from our 2014 article on Doping , and our 2015 article Doping Continued , IGS thought it was time to have a brief look at this continued issue again.

The headline of the recent Irish Times article on Irish greyhound doping, 'Perception that trainers use drugs on dogs ruins industry image', shows exactly how important PR is for the Irish Greyhound Board.

Just as we have seen with misleading injury data from the IGB, and misleading IGB/Irish Retired Greyhound Trust adoption figures - given by the IGB new Chairman, Frank Nyhan, in a statement to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine in 2017 - figures given for anti-doping are also used to mislead the public that the IGB are taking doping seriously.

Despite the IGB, in 2017 taking delivery of a €400k 'state of the art analytical system that allows for the detection of substances..'  the six months samples figure for 2018 falls short of the samples taken for the six months of 2014.


  • 2014 - January to June 2,822  
  • 2018 - January to June 2,665
Indeed the decline in the taking of greyhound urine samples for dope testing, has declined each year since 2013:

  • 2013 - 7,307
  • 2015 - 5,632
  • 2016 - 5,387
  • 2017 - 5,294

On announcing the new testing equipment last year, the IGB stated: 'The Irish Greyhound Board’s programme to enhance integrity in the sport has been significantly strengthened through a major upgrading of its laboratory testing infrastructure.'

If the IGB have a 'programme to enhance integrity' in greyhound racing,
 then why is their new 'state of the art' testing equipment not used more - 
to take full advantage of it's capabilities?


Could it be that the new testing equipment will overheat if used to much?

Or, could it be that if more urine samples are taken, then more urine samples will show positives for prohibited substances? 

After all, the 'perception that trainers use drugs on dogs ruins industry image'