Are NADA statistics indicative of dopers going on the backfoot?

The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) says its athlete awareness programme against doping has paid off for the second successive year, bringing down ‘positive’ cases for 2017 to just 69, the lowest in eight years.

“The National Anti-Doping Agency during the calendar year 2017 again exceeded its WADA recommended testing target of 3000”, NADA stated in a press release on January 19. “It even exceeded the testing figures of the calendar year 2016 by about 7 per cent.”

The “achievement” in 2016, Olympic year at that, one hoped, NADA would not use as a yardstick. For, the 2699 urine samples collected that year happened to be the second lowest behind the 2331 in the first year of NADA’s existence, 2009.

“There has been a significant increase in out-of-competition testing as compared to the previous year,” NADA said.

The “significant increase’ was from 1330 urine samples to 1486, an addition of a mere 156 samples. Let us not forget, NADA did 1611 samples in out-of-competition testing in 2015 and 2225 in 2014.

Still a concern

While it may be heartening to note that the ‘positive’ percentage has come down from 2.7% in 2016 to 2.0 per cent in 2017, the fall in overall urine sample numbers should be of concern to everyone who believes in competing fair and square and in the anti-doping movement.

If we go back to April, 2017, it may be recalled, concerned with the rising number of dopers in the country, with India being ranked third for three successive years from 2013, Niti Aayog had suggested that NADA increase the sample numbers to 5000.

NADA, in is enthusiasm, said at that time that it would go for 7000 tests. Now, NADA says: “Niti Ayog had in April recommended to increase the testing figures from the year 2017-18 onwards to up to 5000. NADA has accordingly increased the target which however is subject to enhanced manpower and additional budgetary allocation.”

While jumping for the 7000-sample target, NADA should have realized the budgetary constraints. Sources indicated that NADA was not just under budgetary constraints about a couple of months ago it was also running short of test kits.

But NADA has ambitious plans to boost numbers for the rest of January and for the months of February and March before the close of the financial year.

Most national-level meets in Jan-March?

“As most national level competitions take place during January to March, a large number of tests (about 2000) have been planned for the current quarter as per the Test Plan developed by NADA on the basis of risk assessment and other prescribed parameters,” NADA said in its statement.

Two thousand tests in about 72 days is what NADA is planning now. That would be some sort of a record for NADA itself. But let us first look at the ‘crowded calendar’ ahead of us up to March end.

Last year, NADA did 277 tests from January to March, during the supposedly packed calendar (NDTL testing figures; NADA has been giving out a tally of 1143 samples for the same period. Unless someone clarifies we may have to be satisfied with these figures and keep guessing!)

Let us now look at which all senior National championships are over and which could be ongoing or coming up.

The National championships in basketball are ongoing. Weightlifting National which was scheduled from January 20 (no news yet) may be ongoing and may provide a decent number of samples while basketball can at best contribute a dozen or less. This is based on NADA’s own philosophy of “risk assessment".

The senior National championships in athletics, cycling, swimming, boxing and wrestling are already over. These sports should always figure high in NADA’s “risk assessment” even if they may not be at this point. In an effort to boost numbers towards the additional target of 2000, NADA can pick up around 100 samples from the Khelo India School Games scheduled in Delhi from 31 January.

Last-minute dash to boost numbers

But we may as well ask: Is this last-minute dash to reach a year’s target justifiable in an anti-doping perspective? Mind you, this is not a government department trying to exhaust sanctioned funds before the financial year ends; this is testing target.

NADA’s prime failure in 2017 was in practically ignoring major National meets in athletics. It managed less than 25 samples from the inter-State meet in Guntur (according to athletics officials), skipped the Open National in Chennai, missed the inter-university meet and then missed the National cross-country meet also.

Athletics has been in the forefront of Indian doping during the past few years. It topped the Indian dopers list in 2014 (29) and 2016 (23) and came second to weightlifting (56) in 2015 with 24.

Obviously, athletics and weightlifting should get the maximum attention from NADA. Needless to say, senior National championships should top the target list. Apparently, NADA’s philosophy towards Open National (Sept) was there was no urgency since it had already done the Federation Cup at Patiala (June), three Indian Grand Prix meets and the Asian championships in Bhubaneswar (July). This only betrays an ignorance about how athletes dope and about the role of stimulants in the performance-enhancing area.

With a list of 64 athletes in its Registered Testing Pool (RTP), one would expect NADA to do at least four out-of-competition tests on each of these athletes every year apart from in-competition tests as per its test distribution plan.

The meets should compulsorily include the Fed Cup, Indian Grand Prix, Inter-State, Open National, Inter-University, National racewalking, National cross-country, any other National meet in specific groups (like sprints meet or jumps meet), Junior National and Fed Cup, National schools athletics/National School Games and now Khelo India School Games. If there are 40-plus events at a majority of these meets, one would expect over 100 urine samples being collected by NADA at such meets.

It is time for NADA to shed this attitude of “seven-per-cent-increase over last year”.  Reduction in numbers will invariably bring down number of positives. That should not be the aim either for NADA/Sports Ministry or Niti Aayog in their drive towards getting out of the ‘top-three’ dopers list in the world.

See how the ‘positive’ cases come down as sample numbers are cut in the past two years:

Year	Number of urine samples	Adverse Analytical Findings	Percentage of positive results
2009	2331	67	2.9
2010	2794	107	3.8
2011	3206	116	3.6
2012	3813	138	3.6
2013	4073	93	2.2
2014	4045	99	2.4
2015	4734	110	2.3
2016	2699	73	2.7
2017	3312	69	2.0

Source: WADA & NADA

Indian athletics provided the following number of samples from 2013:

2013-1298, 2014-1171, 2015-1470, 2016-970

Will 2017 match those figures? If not, then what would be the point in having 64 track and field athletes in the RTP? There is no record to show how many of the RTP athletes (41 in May 2015) have been tested so far through the years.

Testing athletes in Rajasthan State meet or West Bengal State meet is no substitute for testing in National championships though in the overall perspective such testing is always welcome. If resources are limited then it would be better for NADA to concentrate on the most vulnerable sport like athletics, weightlifting, wrestling, boxing, swimming and cycling, from an Olympic sport perspective, rather than bodybuilding and powerlifting.

The Weightlifting Federation’s Vice President (now Secretary-General) Sahdev Yadav was quoted in this Indian Express report last year saying: “it ‘defied logic’ that NADA collected samples of only eight players (lifters) out of the 300-odd participants (at the National championships in 2016). Till 2015, he claimed, the dope officers would collect ‘more than 60 samples.”

‘Risk assessment’ and ‘target testing’ would have lost much of their meaning if major championships in weightlifting and athletics are given a miss or only nominal number of samples are collected at these meets as though performing a ritual. Weightlifting provided 23 positive cases in 2014, 56 in 2015 and 14 in 2016. Athletics produced three major cases (shot putter Inderjeet Singh, sprinter Dharambir Singh and quarter-miler Priyanka Panwar) in the Olympic year.

NADA has to beef up its staff strength, as one keeps pointing out, work out a more meaningful test distribution plan, pursue its RTP testing more vigorously and make sure that no procedural loopholes are left behind for the hard-core doper to escape.