The sooner NADA launches biological passport programme the better

The National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) topped the percentages of positive tests recorded among those National Anti Doping Organisations (NADOs) that tested more than 4000 samples during the year 2014.

The Indian anti-doping body registered 2.3 per cent with a tally of 99 positive cases from 4340 samples to top the charts though Indian NADA was No. 2 in 2014 in the total number of positive tests (99), behind the Russian NADO (114 from 12556 samples at 0.9%) and just ahead of the French NADO (98 from 7434 samples at 1.3%).

Many other countries were ahead on the percentage of positive tests recorded with much lesser numbers of samples. For example, South Africa had 55 positive cases from 1919 samples (3%) while Turkey had 65 from 2392 samples (2.7%).

Athletics in front

Athletics once again contributed the maximum to NADA’s success in 2014, with 29 positive cases from 1246 samples including 75 blood samples, amounting to 2.3%. Weightlifting, with 23 positive cases from 418 samples was at 5.5%. Athletics had 28 positive cases from 1314 samples (2.13%) in 2013 while weightlifting had 19 from 727 samples (2.6%) that year.

Officials have often attributed the higher percentages of doping incidence in Indian athletics to the proliferating drug use at departmental level, but National-level athletes have not been meager in number during the past six years.

In a total of 143 cases brought forward before the National Anti Doping Disciplinary Panel (NADDP) in athletics since the inception of NADA in 2009 and up to 2014_including five athletes who tested positive for a second time during this period_there had been 53 athletes who had either competed at the senior National level or the Junior National level.

This amounts to 37 per cent of the total number of cases, not a figure to be dismissed as negligible or not relevant.

Fourteen of them were senior National champions, almost all of them internationals. There were several others who were National Games champions, Junior National champions or medal winners at senior and junior levels in all-India meets including competitions like the Federation Cup and Indian Grand Prix.

Of the 143, two women athletes were reprieved. One was a case of evasion against former Asian champion in 400m, Manjeet Kaur that could not be proved. The other was that of CRPF thrower Saroj Sihag, former National champion and National Games champion whose steroid violation case in 2010 was dismissed due to faulty procedures.

(Out of 573 cases reported by NADA since 2009 and handled by hearing panels up to February this year, 116 cases were from weightlifting, 41 from powerlifting, 40 from wrestling, 38 from boxing and 31 from kabaddi.)

Departmental meets the villain?

It is true that departmental meets, especially in Police and the Services, do ‘net’ quite a few dopers in athletics. But then, it is also true that regular dope testing in a departmental meet like that of the Railways, the largest public sector unit that employs athletes in India, did not start till 2013. That too when a long jumper set a national record and the media pointed out the lack of dope-testing arrangements at the meet that prevented the record-setter, Kumaravel Premkumar, being tested on the day of the competition. It is a different matter that Premkumar holds the official national record of 8.09m set at that meet!

Steroids have remained the choicest drug of the Indian athletes through all these years. In 142 cases where positive dope tests were reported among athletes in the 2009-2014 period, there were as many as 118 cases of steroids, a whopping 83 per cent. Many of them were for multiple steroids use.

Stanozolol the choicest drug

From sprinters to jumpers to throwers and even to the odd cross-country runner everyone seemed to have preferred steroids. Steroids provide explosive power and strength to sprinters, jumpers and throwers while endurance runners generally go for red blood cell boosters like EPO. 

Not surprisingly, stanozolol, made famous by Canadian Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics, tops the table with 44 cases in Indian athletics from 2009 through to 2014.

Even world-wide, stanozolol continued to be the drug of choice with 239 positive cases in 2014 in all sports accounting for 20 per cent within the steroids category. Though it is a prescription drug, in India it is easily available at drug stores across the country, especially near training centres and gymnasiums. Winstrol and Menabol are two of the popular brands that contain stanozolol.

Nandrolone and its metabolites (30) and methandienone (25) were the other leading steroids among athletes in NADA testing since 2009. Others including testosterone, methyltestosterone, drostanolone, oxandrolone and boldenone accounted for the rest.

The propensity for steroid consumption among Indian athletes should bring into focus the ‘steroidal module’ in the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) launched by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) at the beginning of 2014.

The NADA which is yet to start an ABP programme based on haematological values should hopefully be launching a ‘steroidal module’ too in the near future so that the bulk of the dopers are kept track of. This module would be based on urine tests in contrast to the other one based on blood testing results.

New ABP programme in steroids

How useful the ABP programme based on steroid variations is to be known only, especially at a time when micro-dosing of drugs has been shown to be effective in beating the drug testers.

The Sunday Times-ARD expose into deep-rooted, widespread doping in international athletics has focused on the inadequacies of the anti-doping efforts and the sooner the ABP programme gets off the ground in India, for both blood and steroid values, the better it would be for Indian athletics.

The Rio Olympics qualification race would further hot up soon and there is no time to lose either for NADA or the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in declaring a ‘new war’ on dopers.

NADA did no blood tests to detect EPO and other related substances in 2014 while its in-competition urine testing came up with two positive results, the first ones in India, for these class of substances.

We still await the results of disciplinary procedures launched against these two offenders just as we await the outcome of the ‘whereabouts’ programme in athletics started by NADA last May.