Drugs in Sport/Prime Time Analysis: At a time when documentary is powerful enough to claim the Palme d'Or it was hard not to be stirred by last night's RTÉ Prime Time, writes Ian O'Riordan.
The hour-long investigation into performance enhancing drugs was heavy on facts and hard on the realists and ended as a damning document on sport as we used to know it. Watching this you'd believe sport had no future but that would be ignoring too much about sport.
From the United States to Canada and into Europe it seemed no one would escape implication. If guilt was judged on Olympic or World Championship success, then those left innocent are in the minority. From the opening images of Michelle Smith and her tarnished gold medals of the Atlanta Olympics it was clear Ireland too wasn't so neutral in this regard.
Reporter-producer Michael Heney assembled an all-star cast. On home shores he tracked down an array of former Olympians, from John Treacy and Eamonn Coghlan to the lesser-known Shane Healy and Noel Berkeley. Cyclists featured prominently too and how couldn't they: The former Festina doctor Willy Voet, former Irish professional Paul Kimmage, and Irish mountain-biker Robin Seymour, who in August competes in the Athens Olympics.
But there were also voices from rugby, GAA and domestic soccer - all it appeared with the same story to tell - those that might want to cheat might as well try because chances are they won't get caught.
And the medics and various commissioners played cameo roles throughout. Dr Charles Yesalis, the Penn State specialist in anabolic steroids. Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping agency (WADA). Dr Olivier Rabin, also of WADA and follower of designer steroids. And our own Gerard Hartmann and Al Guy, one arguing for the use of supplements, the other against.
And the scariest cameo of all, the Schwarzenegger mouse, the new symbol for genetic doping - and a method which certain scientists believe could be in operation at the Athens Olympics.
"I try not to think that my sport is basically rotten," said Seymour. "But no Irish cyclist has a chance of getting a medal in the cycling disciplines at the Olympics without taking performance enhancing drugs." And that became the theme of Heney's carefully crafted and impressively thorough work, that no one can expect to go to the Olympic Games or some similar world sporting event and expect to win medals without some performance enhancing substance in their system.
"The only difference between now and my time is that the drugs are even deadlier," explained Kimmage, still with the unwavering belief that all world class cyclists explored the medicine chest at some point. The links with Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly - who both declined to be interviewed - all too clear.
After that Heney tracked down Voet in the French town of Provence, where he now spends his days as a bus driver. His book Breaking the Chain has already sensationally exposed the Belgian's attitude towards drugs in cycling and nothing about the years since the scandal of 1998 has changed his opinion: "Because if you go to war with a catapult," he said chillingly, "when your enemies have a bazooka, you've already lost."
The Irish Sports Council carries out the testing in Ireland but clearly their hands are tied, not just because of the low percentage of people getting caught - but because so many of the drugs available to cheats remain undetectable.
We didn't just get the download on EPO, THG, and HGH. But the other wholly more undetectable drugs such as IGF-1, plain Insulin, hCG, and old fashioned blood doping And we got this comment from Dr Yesalis: "I firmly believe that at this point the people who did get caught, which is still less than one per cent of the people tested, is either unlucky, careless, or has an IQ of around room temperature."
There was precious little balance to that argument, but we did get this from John Treacy, silver medallist in the marathon in the 1984 Olympics and now chief executive of the Irish Sports Council: "I don't believe for one second that you have to be on drugs to win medals at the Olympic Games. I believe you can do it the other route. And I'm a realist. It might be harder, but it's the true way, and it can be done." And here is where the argument got muddy. It was fine to hear the likes of Healy and Berkeley - both good runners in their day but who weren't born in the African mountains and who didn't run to school - talk about drugs being necessary for Olympic medals.
But where does that leave Sonia O'Sullivan? She won a silver medal in Sydney four years ago and on current form won't be too far from the shake-up in Athens in 12 weeks time. Can she just be passed off as another exception or is Olympic success really that dependent on drugs? Sport, concluded Heney "is currently battling for it's very heart and soul. And the struggle against drugs in sport is one we will lose at our peril." But so much about sport was also believing in the impossible, something this investigation failed to appreciate.
