Doping scandal casts shadow over St Patrick's Day festivities
Preparations for the annual St. Patrick's Day parade on Achill Island were thrown into disarray today following allegations that the Dooagh Pipe Band, one of five bagpipe bands that participate in the parade, has been running an illegal performance-enhancing drug programme for its members. Our source, who prefers to remain anonymous, claims that "results don't lie", going on to say: "year after year the Dooagh band wins the 'Best Pipe Band on the Island' competition on St Patrick's Day. We put in much more training than those Dooagh bucks, but we're obviously not competing on a level playing field. There's no way one band can win the competition every single time without doing something illegal."
Our award-winning investigative journalist dug a little deeper to see if the claims had any, ahem, substance to them. What we found did indeed go some way to supporting the accusations. For example, the case of Pipe Major Conall McNamara who has demonstrated suspiciously elevated levels of bagpiping this year.
Mr McNamara performed at multiple events, bagpiping to an exceptional standard every time. It's well known that bagpipers need a minimum recovery time following a performance before playing again, but Mr McNamara played in competition on no fewer than three occasions without meeting the minimum recovery period. This is itself suspicious, and it does fit with the wider narrative as we can report that the entire band will play on four consecutive nights (and twice on Sunday) in the run up to the parade.
The use of performance-enhancing substances also helps bagpipers play all the fiddly bits with gracenotes, and would explain the consistently high results the band has seen.
Accusations from WADPBA (World Anti-Doping in Pipe Bands Association) have surfaced in the wake of the inital report. Dooagh Pipe Band Secretary, David McNamara (no relation to Mr McNamara) defended the band's position, claiming that all bagpipers are tested regularly and none have ever tested positive for banned substances. However our source said that some samples were tampered with during out-of-season testing, while other samples have been cleared on a technicality. A sample from Mr Patrick McNamara (no relation) did on one occasion test positive but, due to a supposed mix-up in the lab, the B sample was registered to Mr Patrick McNamara (possibly related - we'll never know), and was therefore ruled inadmissible in court.
Research on the use of performance-enhancing substances has in the past extended to the drummers. However, results there were inconclusive. The band's physician reported that research featuring Drum Major Owen McNamara (no relation) was carried out over a period of three years, and noted that Mr McNamara didn't show any significant performance differential. "He's like a machine anyway," said the physician (who is probably another McNamara), "he can just go on and on and on".
