Sports and Performance Enhancing Drugs (Doping)

[jai_in_canada]

Yeah, the BADAss consortium apparently includes Burundi, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Bosina, Brazil ....

[prasen9]

Sumit Malik and his team are trying to get his ban reduced. Two year ban They are saying it was a negligible amount and was from a painkiller. Sounds like standard excuses to me.

[Mugundan]

There is no painkiller in the world that has methylhexaneamine as an igredient. There is, in fact, no medicine that contains the substance generally found in supplements with a variety of names.

[Mugundan]

This topic hasn't moved for six months! Surprised!
Important news has come on this front but seems to have made little impact in the Indian media.
Javelin thrower Shivpal Singh has failed a test and has been provisionally suspended. He is yet to be named in any of the reports, but he is the man.
https://www.newindianexpress.com/sport/ ... 08349.html
He was part of the Tokyo Olympics team and is No. 2 Indian in javelin at the moment. Never looked convincing in his performance, swinging from 86 metres to 76 at times and doing poorly in the season gone by. He had won the silver in the Asian championships in 2019.
Another athlete whose doping issue has not attracted much of media attention has been that of a 400m woman runner, two-time Asian Games gold medallist in the 4x400m. She too has not been named in reports but it is easy to make out who she is.
Shivpal might have tested positive in a sample collected between July-Sept last while the woman athlete's case goes back to last Feb or March.
Two star athletes testing positive before the fresh season is a setback to Indian athletics.

[prasen9]

But not unexpected.

Yes, bad news is not a happy thing to cover.

Taranjeet Kaur, U-23 national champion, fails dope test.

Prachi Chaudhary's ban was reduced from four years to two. As was Prince Chaudhary's.

India is #3 wrt dope cheats in the world.

[Mugundan]

India is No 1 or would be No. 1 when the 2019 figures are finally collated.
In the report that WADA released last month, India (152) is No. 3 behind Russia (167) and Italy (157) in the count of nationals for various countries in the anti-doping rule violations for 2019.
However, India, at that point when WADA apparently collected information, had 89 cases pending. Russia had five and Italy zero. A majority of those 89 cases would have been decided by now. A large percentage of it would have ended in ADRVs. Out of 225 adverse analytical findings in 2019 (the largest for any country), our NADA had nil exoneration for medial reasons, nil as "no case to answer" and just one as "no sanction". In comparison, USA (194 adverse analytical findings) had 114 as "no case to answer". (Have no clue how such a large number of adverse findings end up as no case to answer!). So, we are No. 1 by a long way. We will probably come down in 2020 since there were very few testing because of Covid but may pick up a little in 2021. The real test for NADA and the athletes should come in 2022.

[prasen9]

For those wondering, ADRV = positive test results.

[prasen9]

India has developed reference materials for dope testing that we used to import before.

[sameerph]

There it goes-

Discuss thrower Kamalpreet Kaur provisionally suspended after testing positive for banned drug

Somewhat expected it. The big improvement last year was too good to be without some spinach.

[prasen9]

And the other javelin guy got banned too.

[Mugundan]

Both Kamalpreet Kaur and Shivpal's are ongoing cases. In fact Kaur's started just a few days ago. We have no clue about Shivpal's which came from a NADA test.
There is a third one, pending for a year, that of M. R. Poovamma. It should hopefully come out within a few more weeks.
Yes, Kaur's was more or less expected. So, too, Shivpal's. Improving from 61 metres to 66 metres last season was an unbelievable progress made by Kaur. I expected her to plunge in performance at Olympics but she surprised there as well with 64 in qualification.
Shivpal moved about ten metres between 2017 and 2019, 76 to 86,and doubts were bound to crop up. He couldn't sustain that level later on, ending up 27th in OLympic qualification with 76-plus.
There should be several others linining up to fall into the dope net, hopefully this season.

[prasen9]

This behavior is just crazy. If she is not showing up for the dope tests, then she should be banned and dropped from the team. Period. Why do we try to put up with these shenanigans?

[Mugundan]

This behavior is just crazy. If she is not showing up for the dope tests, then she should be banned and dropped from the team. Period. Why do we try to put up with these shenanigans?

To clarify the point about "chasing", "evasion" etc, there is no rule by which she could be penalised. She is not a member of the registered testing pool of either NADA or International federation. She is not obliged to be present at a particular spot on any given day. She could be away from her known residential address without intimation on an emergency or a private matter. At the moment we don't know whether any agency is actually looking for her, only speculative reports. Normally these reports are based on one original report that might have quoted "sources".
AFI has a policy that only those who are in a camp would be chosen for the relay teams. She could be sidelined for the CWG relay team or WC if we qualify. If she competes again and win again and clock a fabulous time, AFI could be under pressure.
Her performance is bound to dip in the coming weeks and months if indeed she had been on dope. Someone who improves from 54-plus seconds to 51-plus in two years has to be on somethting!

[prasen9]

Hmm. So, she is not in the pool. Thanks for setting the record straight. I must say that the pool is then quire narrow and more people should be monitored. Maybe we do not have the money to do so?

[Mugundan]

It is a combination of resource crunch, lack of staff and network of testers, lack of interest etc. Already, there are around 40 track and field athletes in an RTP list of around 135. Going by the rules, NADA needs to do at least three out-of-competition tests aa year on each RTP athlete. This doesn't happen. The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of World Athletics (formerly IAAF) has Neeraj Chopra and Kamalpreet Kaur as the only two Indians in its RTP. To give an idea, AIU has around 70 Kenyan athletes! More Indian athletes in AIU list would help since athletes would be wary of the international federation rather than domestic testing. NADA testing could be avoided to a large extent if the athlete/s is/are based abroad!