The Olympic boxing draw was made today, with Northern Irish fighters finding out who they will face in Rio.
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An Irish Athletic Boxing Association statement said it had been notified by Sport Ireland of an “alleged violation” by one of its high-performance boxers.
O’Reilly qualified for the Rio games at the World Olympic qualifiers in Baku, Azerbaijan in June.
O’Reilly can request his B sample to be tested.
The captain of the Irish boxing team for the London Olympics in 2012, Darren O’Neill, told RTÉ that the allegations could affect the whole Olympic squad.
“IABA’s policy is that doping is contrary to the spirit of sport and every member of the association has a duty to ensure that the sport is free of doping”.
The 29-year-old lightweight, who came close to retirement, says this will be his last chance, as part of an Irish boxing team that is again expected to be strong contenders for medals across several weight classes. It will however be “extremely difficult” for the Portlaoise boxer to succeed on such grounds according to informed sources and should that prove to be the case then his Olympic Games would be over before they had even begun.
In 2004, distance runner Cathal Lombard banned for two years, after both testing positive and admitting to knowingly taking EPO, a performance-enhancing drug that boosts the number of red blood cells.
Cian O’Connor burst into the national conscience as the only Irish medalist at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
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The prohibited substance was reportedly revealed in a test done in Ireland before the boxing team travelled to Brazil. Michelle Smith de Bruin, single-handedly responsible for Ireland’s second-biggest ever olympic medal haul, was banned by FINA, the world’s governing body for swimming, when she was found to have tampered with a urine sample. In October 2008 an FEI tribunal suspended Lynch for three months.
