John Conlan didn’t mince his words when speaking about Michael O’Reilly on Sunday afternoon.
The boxing coach, and father of Michael Conlan, spoke to RTE following his son’s impressive victory over Armenia’s Aram Avagyan, and the topic of O’Reilly’s failed drug test came up.
O’Reilly didn’t get to fight at the Rio Olympics, and has been sent home. Conlan said the episode “embarrassed” the Irish boxing team, and Irish boxing in general.
“There is no getting away from it. It has embarrassed us as a team,” Conlan said.
“He embarrassed Irish boxing and brought a terrible thing to Irish boxing. We are very strict on anti-doping. We bring them [the boxers] to seminars and educate them constantly. We have zero tolerance. We were always ahead of everyone else.”
Conlan also said that O’Reilly had been away from the Irish boxing team for eight weeks, and that they only met up with the fighter at the airport when they were departing for Rio.
“This has been a very difficult two weeks for Irish boxing. We had that whole scandal that shocked us. It shocked us as a team because to be honest, Michael O’Reilly hadn’t been with us for eight weeks. We met him in the airport.”
On June 25, O’Reilly won the final pre-Olympic qualifying tournament to secure his place in Rio. He has since said he he unintentionally took a supplement which contained a banned substance.
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