An Irish Sporting Mystery: The Waterford Crystal B sample robbery revisited
Ireland celebrated with Cian O'Connor when he struck gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004, but that was only the start of one of the most bizarre episodes in Irish sporting history
The Cambridge Constabulary contact was pleasant and helpful, but also pretty bemused. “Just out of interest, why are you revisiting the case?” wrote the contact this week. “No specific reason, I’m just curious.”
It’s over 20 years since the curious case of Waterford Crystal, the stolen urine sample and the gold medal that was and then wasn’t.
Ireland has won 22 Olympic medals in the last five Games — including a record seven medals in Paris last summer — but it used to be a different story.
READ MORE: Where did this cup resurface after mysteriously vanishing in 1983?
Until Cian O’Connor’s intervention, the Irish team in Athens looked destined to draw the eighth medals blank since first Ireland’s debut Olympic participation in 1924.
A few Irish reporters on the ground in Greece sensed a medal story in the making at last on the third last day of action when the trio of O’Connor, Kevin Babington and Jessica Kurten qualified for the Showjumping final.
And so this writer was among those who scrambled out to the Markopoulo Equestrian Centre near Athens Airport on the evening of Friday, August 27.
O’Connor, who was 24, produced a fault-free final round and it was enough to secure the equestrian team’s first ever Olympic gold medal. He punched the air in delight.
“Normally I’m not stuck for words but this time I am,” he said. “I’m absolutely delighted my horse won. He jumped fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for any more.”
Ireland had its moment in the sun, even if the controversy involving the dancing priest Neil Horan, who tackled the lead marathon runner Vanderlei de Lima in the final event of the Games, soon dominated the headlines.
Six weeks later, however, O’Connor and Waterford Crystal were splashed across every front page once again. A dope test on the horse in Athens showed traces of two antipsychotic drugs, luphenazine and zuclophenthixol — both used to treat schizophrenia in humans.
O’Connor and his vet James Sheeran protested that the drugs were in a sedative used on Waterford Crystal five weeks before the Games for a fetlock injury.
Equestrian sport’s governing body, the FEI, had warned competitors that their testing procedures had improved. In Waterford Crystal’s case, the sedative hadn’t totally washed out of its system.
O’Connor felt that the B sample would work in his favour but all hell broke loose when, on October 21, the FEI was informed that a sample portion was stolen from the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory in Newmarket.
Police in Cambridge only learned of the crime five days later. They investigated, as did police in Lausanne, where the FEI is based. It emerged that an unknown person signed for the delivery of the sample.
Avril Doyle, the Equestrian Federation of Ireland president, was at a loss — she had been told by the FEI that the sample was en route to Hong Kong, not split between Cambridge and New York.
The controversy deepened when a break-in at the offices of the EFI in Kill was discovered by cleaners early on the morning of November 1. Doyle described the incident as “sinister”.
A file on another of O’Connor’s horses that had tested positive that summer, ABC Landliebe, was the only thing stolen. A page of that file was sent by fax to RTE’s Charlie Bird. O’Connor insisted at the time that he wasn’t responsible as he already had the information on the file.
In an Irish Times interview almost five years ago, he addressed that period. “I didn’t know anything about it at the time, I still don’t know anything about it,” O’Connor said.
“People who didn’t really understand the story obviously pointed the finger. But we knew there was a blood sample to come and we already had our own copies of the documents that were in the federation.
“There was nothing to be gained for us when those things happened. It was compared at the time to a Dick Francis novel and it was a mad time, definitely.
“It gave different dimensions to it and it meant there was more intrigue around it in the public. But there were factions around who would have gone to any lengths to be against me.”
Former Ireland chef d’Equipe Tommy Wade also weighed in after the break-in. “The motive is to blacklist Cian O’Connor,” he said. “Why? Certain people want Cian O’Connor pulled down. It’s the police’s job to find those people and they’re not very hard to find.”
The blood portion of the sample was tested in New York and O’Connor was stripped of the gold medal the following March following a hearing in Zurich.
He went on to win bronze at London 2012 and Paris 2024 was his fourth Games. Meanwhile, the perpetrators of both robberies have never been found. The Cambridgeshire Constabulary and Naas Gardai haven’t closed the cases.
“A comprehensive investigation occurred at the time led by Naas District Detective Unit,” said the Garda Press Office of the FEI office break-in. A Garda investigation into the burglary remains open at this time.
In Cambridge, CCTV footage was checked and phone call traces made to DHL’s customer services division on the day the same was stolen.
And, from the Cambridgeshire Constabulary corporate communications office, came this statement this week: “An extensive investigation was carried out, including interviewing the courier who delivered the sample, analysing phone data and taking fingerprints from various items.
“The case was eventually filed pending further investigative opportunities coming to light.”
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