Job-seekers beefing up doping numbers?

Why is it that Indian athletics is among the toppers in the world of doping?

If you want to believe the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), it could be an “educational matter”.

Both the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and the IAAF seem to believe that part of the problem could lie in the desire of the job-seeking athletes to do better in recruitment tests, eventually leading to positive dope tests and sanctions.

An IAAF spokesperson recently provided an exclusive interview to ‘Inside the Games’ a respected English sports website that deals with the coverage of the Olympic Games and several other multi-discipline games to explain the Indian phenomenon.

The ‘revelations’ are startling, nay unbelievable.

The gist of the story  is, lower-level athletes who compete at a recreational and social level are turning up positive for dope, adding to the overall numbers of dopers, that India has a national-level sports examination which leads to a doping control and that at the highest level Indian athletes conform to anti-doping regulations.

Many young sportspersons would wish we had a ‘national-level sports examination’, with doping control, that could pave the way for their secure employment in Central Services.

But the truth is India does not have any such system.

Dope control at recruitment centres?

The Civil Services Examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to recruit candidates for Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others, does not have a ‘sports examination’ or a ‘sports quota’ nor does it have doping control.

The Railways, Police etc have ‘sports quota’, but then again there is no centralized sports examination or for that matter doping control during selection. The Armed Forces too have their selection process but there too there is no doping control before recruitment.

A few years ago, one regional wing of the Railways did attempt to dope-test candidates appearing for recruitment at an Uttar Pradesh centre, but almost all athletes pulled out of the fray coming to know of the presence of dope-testers! Once more was the experiment allowed to run but later given up since it was felt that the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) could be breaching regulations in the WADA Code.

Except for one ‘positive’ test in hockey (eventual fate of the player not known) there were no cases reported.

Code of ethics

The code of ethics says that unless the collection of samples is part of an “anti-doping programme” the laboratory should not accept such samples. NADA is yet to spread its wings across the recruitment terrain, hassled as it is to conduct routine ‘in-competition’ and ‘out-of-competition’ tests.

So, what we do realize is the truth that there are no ‘recreational athletes’ or prospective job-seeking athletes who were subjected to doping control at an all-India sports exam among the 113 athletes mentioned in the ‘Inside the games’ report (106 as per NADA website, updated up to November 2013) and sanctioned so far since NADA came into existence in 2009.

In fact, a large majority of those 100-plus athletes are National-level athletes, quite a few of them having represented the country, and almost all of them (barring some in Police meets) having tested positive in national-level meets or out-of-competition tests.

NADA does not normally conduct tests in state-level or regional meets. Last year it turned down a request from Kerala authorities to test at the state schools athletics meet.

'Unknown, recreational athletes'

Yet, the IAAF spokesperson had been quoted here, as having said, “"All but a few of the cases involve unknown recreational and social level athletes who do not compete in the sport at even a high regional let alone national level,"

Doping control beyond the realms of competitive sports or activities not under the authority of a National Federation or an International Federation or a National Anti-Doping Organization or the World Anti-Doping Agency or the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or any agency delegated the powers by any of the principal anti-doping authorities would not be possible. It will be meaningless, too, since you cannot impose sanctions without the athlete being under the authority of a national agency.

The world over only a small percentage of the top-10 athletes is ‘caught’ in each country every year or reported for a doping offence in a major competition. The majority always comprises “low-level competitors”. India is no exception in this regard.

Thus, to state “the IAAF claim most of these cases consist of low-level competitors and, at the highest level, Indian athletes conforms to and generally applies with anti-doping regulations" is to miss the reality of dope testing.

The big fish evades

From Ben Johnson through to Lance Armstrong, the history of anti-doping is replete with instances of the “big fish” not falling into the net even as hundreds of others get caught.

It is true meets like the all-India Police championships in India provide a fair number of ‘positive’ tests, but then these are not ‘recreational athletes’. They are competing with the hope of getting into the teams for the National-level meets whereby they might get a chance to represent the country and, if they succeed, earn fame and make millions.

The departmental meets especially the Railways championships, which parade a virtual ‘who is who’ of Indian athletics, contribute to the overall growth of the country’s athletics. It would be illogical and unfair to presume that the Railways, Police, Services, Petroleum Sector, Banks etc are spending crores to run ‘recreational athletics’. Incidentally, till last year, the Railway championships did not have doping control.

No systematic cheating!

But this is what the IAAF line of thinking is, it would seem, on ‘lower-level competitors’, "They are simply not aware of anti-doping practices rather than being involved in any form of systematic cheating.

It is true that athletes could fall victim to wrong advice by coaches and peers and get into the trap of doping knowingly or unknowingly. India can do with more ‘education’ programmes on doping matters at all levels. But to think that athletes are testing positive because they have been consuming tablets given by their coaches or doctors in the garb of ‘vitamins and minerals’ is to be completely naïve.

The athletes at the national level are not only literate but also aware of anti-doping matters. The odd one might come from a rural background with limited resources and little knowledge of the internet, the WADA Code or the Prohibited List.

With that example or examples of a few such athletes alone one should not try to paint a picture of illiteracy and ignorance about doping rules and substances when it comes to Indian athletics. It is good only as a ‘defence argument’ before a panel in a doping case.

Of the 106 athletes (listed by the NADA on its website up to November, 2013) against whom sanctions were imposed during the 2009-2013 period, as many as 85 were steroid offenders. Most of them would not have consumed nandrolone, stanozolol or testosterone out of ignorance. Some of them tested positive for multiple steroids.

Lack of education

There was just one case in 2012, out of these 85 steroid offenders, that of 17-year-old Jagdish Patel, who competed in the National cross-country championships, which fell into the classification of ‘poor education’.

The hearing panel felt the circumstances of Patel being prescribed Decabolin (nandrolone) injections for the treatment of typhoid (a difficult story to believe all the same) at a health centre in Jaunpur, UP, might have come about because of his poor educational background. He was given a reduced sanction of one year.

.The immediate provocation for the latest explanation from the IAAF seems to have been the wide media coverage during the past few months of India having either topped or shared the No. 1 spot with Russia in the matter of doping suspensions in athletics.

Someone from India seems to have briefed the IAAF on the matter and in turn the IAAF has given out a completely misleading picture of doping in Indian athletics.

If one goes back to the pre-NADA days also one will find that National champions and internationals, rather than ‘recreational athletes’ had turned in positive dope tests among Indian athletes. Some of them were not even proceeded against.

Now, it is not very clear what “educational matter” is. Is it an educational matter for the IAAF? Or is it matter of poor education among athletes that is causing this rash of doping cases in Indian athletics?

Athletes have to conform to anti-doping regulations, whether at the highest level or lowest level. In India, there is only one agency that conducts dope tests, the NADA. It is the sole testing authority and the sole ‘results management’ agency for all sports including athletics.

No testing records in public domain

There is no record in public domain of the number of times top-level athletes have been tested in India. The NADA does not have a ‘whereabouts’ programme yet in athletics, meaning there is no surprise, no-advance-notice testing at home or training centres.

People who have worked at the National Institute of Sports (NIS), Patiala, have confirmed in the past that when testers arrive, athletes who want to evade do manage to evade them.

There was a classic case in 2006 when a testing team, probably deputed by the WADA landed at Patiala only to find that all the athletes who were training at the ground till then had disappeared one by one.

The dope-testing team had come chasing a batch of 40 athletes who had evaded a squad from South African Institute of Drug Free Sports (SAIDS) in January 2006 while training at Potchefstroom. The team was probably acting on behalf of the IAAF or WADA.

The IAAF and WADA carried out several ‘missions’ through the course of the rest of the year to ‘catch’ the athletes whom they were targeting. They got none at the time they were looking for them.

The IAAF included a large number of Indian athletes in its registered testing pool in 2007, much against the normal practice and tested 19 athletes, all of them multiple times. No ‘positive’ test was, however, reported.

These were not ‘recreational athletes’. They formed the ‘cream’ of Indian athletics.

--eom.