DRUGS IN SPORT/SWIMMING:THE PARTICIPATION of Andrew Bree at this year's Olympic Games, at this stage Ireland's only swimming qualifier, is in doubt following a positive finding from a drugs test conducted last year.

Bree, who won a silver medal in the European Short Course championships in Dublin in 2003, registered an adverse finding for a drug which is a common substance in Vicks inhaler products. According to LEN, the European governing body for swimming, the drug is levmethamfetamine.

LEN conducted the urine test at last December's European Short Course championships in Hungary.

The positive result pertains to Bree's A sample, and although the B sample has yet to be tested, the first result in most cases confirms the findings of the A.

Bree may now ask for the B sample to be analysed. If Fina, the world governing body for the sport, receive that request, it must be carried out within three weeks of the swimmer being notified of the A result.

A breaststroke specialist, Bree has been Ireland's outstanding performer over the last five years and is likely to be the only Irish swimmer to reach the qualifying standard for Beijing. He was the first male Irish swimmer to win a European medal since Gary O'Toole also won silver in 1979.

Bree clinched Olympic qualification last July during the 200 metres breaststroke at the US National Championships in Indianapolis. A student at the University of Tennessee, he also broke his three-year-old Irish senior record with a time of two minutes 13.44 seconds in the swim.

It is understood Bree regularly used an inhaler, and yesterday his family confirmed that in a statement, saying he had mistakenly consumed the banned substance.

"We believe that this negative (sic) test is the result of Andrew unwittingly taking a stimulant contained within an over-the-counter decongestant," the statement read.

"Andrew has never knowingly taken a banned substance and abhors the use of performance -enhancing drugs.

"He will move to clear his name as quickly as possible so that he can continue preparations for the Beijing Olympics."

Swim Ireland have been informed of the positive test, which means that, if the decongestant was responsible for the positive finding, the required administration procedures and protocol surrounding the permissible taking of medical substances had not not followed. It strongly suggests that Bree falls outside of Fina's "applicable therapeutic use exemption".

All sorts of substances that are contained on the banned list are permitted under certain circumstances. But this is closely controlled by governing bodies and every athlete or their team doctor must fill in detailed forms explaining the athlete's condition and the product they are taking.

However, levmethamfetamine has also proved to be a particularly controversial product in sport, and was highlighted at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, where Scotland's Alain Baxter was deemed to have committed a doping offence for testing positive for the same substance.

The confusion in that case arose over a minor and technical difference between similar Vicks products that are available in Europe and the US. There are essentially two forms of the same drug, the "levo" form and the "dextro" form. The American version of the inhaler contains the levo form, levmethamfetamine, which is included on the banned substance list.

Although the levo form of the drug is a very weak stimulant and was agreed by experts not to be performance-enhancing, the exacting interpretation of the law was that Baxter was guilty of a doping violation.

All athletes are governed by the principle of strict liability, and Bree, like Baxter, is responsible for what is detected in his body.

Doping Rule DC2.1.1 of Fina states: "It is each competitor's personal duty to ensure that no prohibited substance enters his or her body. Competitors are responsible for any prohibited substance or its metabolites or markers found to be present in their bodily specimens. Accordingly, it is not necessary that intent, fault, negligence or knowing use on the competitor's part be demonstrated in order to establish an anti-doping violation under DC2.1."

Bree now has a difficult task if he is to take the plane to China in August, although the burden of proof rests with Fina. They must establish a standard of proof that is greater than the balance of probability but less than beyond reasonable doubt.

All of that could vanish if the B sample reveals a different result from the A.

The last Irish swimmer to face such an agonising wait was Michelle De Bruin and that resulted in a four-year ban, which effectively ended her career and the chance for her to defend the three gold medals she had won in the Atlanta Olympic Games.