The winner of the 2022 Dublin Marathon men’s title, Taoufik Allam of Morocco, and the winner of the women’s title in 2015 and 2017, Natalyia Lehonkova of Ukraine, were both suspended for three years by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for EPO after a marathon in the Netherlands in April.
This is the second year that Dublin is an elite event with World Athletics. As well as the elite field being subjected to World Athletics anti-doping rules and regulations, organisers also have to submit the names of the elite athletes to the world governing body in advance.
“So as soon as we start inviting them, even though the list may change, we have to send them to World Athletics and if there’s anything there they say, ‘well listen, you can’t do this’,” Aughney says. “All the athletes have to be submitted to World Athletics beforehand, and because it’s an elite event, you actually have to expand the testing afterwards.”
Aughney said they contacted World Athletics to see if they had any recourse to reclaim the €12,000 prize-money Allam won two years ago.
“We wrote to World Athletics to see if we had any grounds after that but he was tested in Dublin, World Athletics tested him and said he’s fine and you can’t touch anything.
“After that you’re going by what the governing authorities tell you, we told them about it and asked them what they recommended we do and they said, listen, if he was clean on that day or whatever, they didn’t recommend that we go back retrospectively for any result that they had prior to that.”
Last year, around 6,000 running entries went unused from the 22,500 overall entry. While a new refund option has been introduced as well as an option to transfer an entry, Aughney says they will only find out on the day of the marathon if these measures have been effective with reducing no-shows.
“It’s a shame that the runner numbers sent out are not used,” Aughney added. “We’ll look at the data afterwards and see what impact that had and look at the people that, let’s say, had the priority code, what percentage of those don’t run, how many were in the lottery, what percentage of those don’t run and then general entries, what percentage of those don’t run. And then see where the drop-off is.”
“If you look at pre-Covid, the run to entry was 85 per cent, it was always around the 15 per cent, and that was across the board, it’s not just with us. Post-Covid that dropped to 80 per cent and, again, it’s not just us, you see that across other events.”
This month’s marathon will have a new start on Leeson Street Upper and will finish on Mount Street Upper.
“It’s a new start and finish, so it’s like starting all over again. It’s amazing the different footprint just throws things up differently for you,” said Aughney.
“We’re ready to go with the plan that we have. There are so many moving parts that something may get dropped, but we’ll learn as we go along. Normally it takes two to three years to really bed into a new start-finish to get everything the way we want it to be. That will be a concern on the morning, but hopefully we can plug any gaps before somebody else sees them.”
