Collin Chartier EPO Shame: Chris McCormack & Tim Don React

Tim Don has called for ’intelligent questions’ to be asked in the wake of Collin Chartier’s positive test for EPO in a new edition of the Short Chute Show Triathlon Podcast.

Don and Chris McCormack debated the issue that has forced its way to the forefront of the triathlon news agenda in the first episode of the revamped show for 2023, hosted by Will McCloy.

Chartier is now serving a ban from triathlon after admitting doping, saying he started taking EPO in November and been caught by an out of competition test.

Don said: “The thing that baffles me I think he started taking in November and he said no one else is involved. He said no one else was involved and he bought it online but he was in Europe, America, Europe and back to America, he said he was taking it three times a week. How do you travel with EPO? Do you order online and say ‘change of address, it’s not going to my house in America, it’s going to my house in Girona, oh, now it’s going to London because I’m there for a week’. There’s too many holes in his stories.

“They said they did a deep dive when they investigated him but his coach found out an hour before we did. So I’m really confused.

“Everyone is angry and quite rightly but now we need to turn that anger into intelligent questions to find out how and why. Not the mental state because he’s hopefully dealing with that with his friends and family, but the practicalities of how he did it because it doesn’t make sense.”

Triathlon legend McCormack sounded equally as confused by the situation. He said: “You can say sorry as much as you like, but it was quite heavy. You made a decision and now question marks surround everything you’ve ever done, but that decision to cheat is just, within sport, within anything, it’s just not right.

“It has created a lot of uproar. I was looking at this athlete and I saw his performance at the PTO (US Open) and his run there was amazing, he won Ironman Mont Tremblant where he beat Josh Amberger and he was an athlete on the rise and he came from not nowhere but this was an athlete who was a big athlete for the future.

“He was training with Lionel Sanders and doing so much positive stuff and then bang, he pisses positive and it’s game over. I guess the question mark is when a donkey becomes a racehorse, sometimes you need to question it.”