Dear Cathal,

Jesus, it must be tough living inside your head right now. It must be really fucking tough. I’m sure that it’s never been harder than it is today. Nothing to do now but get on with it, no matter how impossible it seems. To keep on keeping on, like a bird that flew – tangled up in blue. That’s how you must feel right now: tangled up in all sorts of blues that you’d never have dreamt possible. Well, for what it’s worth, amid all of the easy condemnations and the liberal use of the word disgraced, there are plenty of people who have sympathy with you, and for what you’re going through.

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have, or that they’re not doing the idealistic thing. But what a terrible moment it must have been, when they came after you in St. Moritz and asked you to do the test. Did you know then that the game was up, and that there was no way back? Or did you feel that there was a slim chance, just a tiny one even, that the drugs wouldn’t show, that the EPO might be undetectable? Did you spend the intervening time, between the test and the results, hoping against hope, against feverish fucking hope, that it would all turn out fine and that you could head off to the Olympics with the dream still alive?
Or did you know from the minute you opened the door to the man with the briefcase and the phials that it was all over – bar the shouting.
And then when the call came through to say that the test had come back positive – I can only imagine what it was like to be at the end of that particular line. The sheer nightmarish loneliness of it. And the fear. About what would become of you now. About your family and what this would do to them. About the public odium. About the inevitable crowing of the media. About the exposure and the publicity and the attention. What you need now like a fucking hole in the head.
Talking to friends about it today, there was one question that had us all bamboozled. How could you have thought you’d get away with it? Did it not strike you that the feds would get a sniff? That they’d notice the fantastic leaps forward you were making? That they’d start to smell a rat – and that they’d act on it? How could it have made sense to take that kind of risk? For someone of your professional standing, as a solicitor?
I guess your previous day job doesn’t make your current position any easier. Being a solicitor, one might have assumed that you’d have a more acute sense of what was at stake. But now that the shit has hit the fan, it must be all the more troubling, to be on the wrong side of the laws of the sport. You must be wondering if there is a way back, at all. I guess one of my reasons for writing is to say that I believe there is. That after this, things can only get better…
I think you’ve done the right thing, owning up. Your comments – or what I’ve read of them to date at least – seem to be well judged. You’re right, the use of drugs in athletics has reached epidemic proportions. Well, actually, it isn’t a recent phenomenon at all – track and field has been a pharmacist’s playground for years.
When Ben Johnson failed a drug test after racing to victory in the 1988 Olympics 100 metres final, he was identified as a drug cheat, stripped of his medal and hounded out of the sport – a lonely and vilified figure, who even worse had the temerity to claim that he was being wronged. Well, of the eight finalists in that race, five failed drugs tests at some later stage of their careers. So it’s true that, in the heel of the hunt, you might reasonably ask: is Ben Johnson not the one who was badly treated by the authorities and the media?
In an interview in 1996, Johnson said: “Yes, I was taking steroids, but so were others on the starting line that day. They know it. I know it. That’s all that counts. If people are naive enough to believe that athletes don’t take drugs, that is their problem.”
So, the argument that you wanted an equal chance strikes a familiar chord. All the other guys are doing it, so why can’t I? And it leads on to another question: is there any point in continuing the campaign to catch people using drugs in sport? If the working assumption has to be that a lot of the top athletes are pumped up to the gills at least some of the time, then might it not be best just to let it roll?
The drive to push the limits of human achievement isn’t just about money or acclaim or winning Olympic titles either. Down at the average gym right now, there’s a guy doing weights who’s taken steroids just so he can lift a little bit more, and a little bit more often. For the feeling of power and strength and control that it gives him. For the satisfaction of beating his previous best. For the pleasure of making his body bend to his will and produce that bit more when the chips are down.
I understand the idealism of those who believe that drugs can be rooted out of sport. I also understand the drive to compete that convinces individuals that they have to join the pharmaceutical legions, if they want to be in with a chance.
Sport that you have to use drugs to excel at cannot be a good thing. But sport that deceives itself into thinking that it is winning a battle if it isn’t, and that singles out individuals for the vilification that follows when they fail drug tests – that cannot be a good thing either.
Anyway, whatever about a debate that is likely to rage for some time to come, I hope that it all doesn’t hit you too hard – that you can find within yourself what is needed to take the experience on board and to fight your way back, both on a personal level and in whatever field you decide to work now professionally.
There may be some people who will take pleasure in your downfall – but that is to be expected. Much more important to know that the whole world doesn’t feel that way, not by a long shot.
Good luck to you.
Yours sincerely,

Niall Stokes