An Open National that failed to attract NADA

Photo_courtesy G. Rajaraman.

“It was an open championship, I believe, and it does not have much relevance and significance.”

The statement hits you like a ton of bricks!

Trying to read that line on your smartphone as you wake up in the morning, you rub your eyes to make sure you got it right.

An Open National Athletics Championship is of not much relevance in an anti-doping perspective! That was the essence of the statement.

Yes, the unfortunate, ill-timed statement has come from the Director-General of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). No less.
Anti-doping will not be able to achieve its goals if men in charge come up with such ill-informed, damaging statements. The NADA chief who was abroad at that time, was quoted as saying that there might have been more important assignments for his team at the time of the National championships, a vague excuse that betrayed his own lack of understanding of his organisation's plans.

One had heard murmurs about very few samples having been collected at the National Inter-State championships at Guntur last July. That happened to be the final shot for athletes trying to qualify for the World Championships in London. It was foolish, one thought, to cut down on samples for such an important meet.

And now comes this: No testing at Open National and the NADA boss justifying it by claiming it was just an ‘open championship’ and was of little relevance. It is ‘open’ because institutional sides get a chance to field teams.  The States, too. But ‘open’ does not mean anyone can enter. It has to be an affiliated unit of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and there are minimum standards prescribed for an athlete to be eligible to enter.

Without the NADA knowing perhaps_and probably without the athletes also being aware of it_the Commonwealth Games qualification process had begun with the Open at Chennai.

The NADA, under Navin Agarwal since June, 2016, seemed to have done reasonably well in catching a few “big fish” in the Olympic year.

The slide

Then things started slipping a little. The Hindustan Times reported early 2017 that the National Sports Federations (NSFs) were getting worried because NADA had started cutting down on the number of tests in each of the Olympic sports discipline, possibly to work within its budget.

The new ‘mantra’, it was explained, was “risk assessment” and “targeted testing”. People in the field of sports always knew the most vulnerable sport in terms of doping propensity and those within such sports also knew who were the most likely candidates who were either already into juicing up or likely to taste the stuff.

The news about reduced number of samples for 2017, brought out a desired response from higher-ups. Fortunately, that is. Niti Aayog, worried about the continued status of India as the No. 3 doping country in the world (a position maintained from 2013 through to 2015), directed that NADA do at least 5500 tests this year.

NADA suddenly increased that number to target 7000 tests despite “budgetary constraints”. Mind you, it had cut down on tests at the national level and then this realization that “we have to do 7000”. Perhaps that is where the trouble started.

Such numbers can often cloud logical thinking and reasoning. “Let’s-beef-up-numbers” is never the answer to improved anti-doping measures. Which sport do you want to target with the hiked numbers and which competitions and who among them in particular? That should have been the topmost question and number one priority.

Worried federations

Instead NADA seemed to have hit upon a “great idea” of carrying out doping control at State athletics championships and weightlifting championships and inter-college competitions even as the respective federation officials expressed their frustration at not being able to curb doping since their major competitions were being either ignored or given low priority.

The Hindustan Times quoted the officiating secretary of the IWLF, Sahdev Yadav to say that domestic testing had become a routine. He said the past year NADA had tested 180 samples spread across youth, junior and senior groups (Nationals). “This time (2016) anti-doping officials skipped youth and junior events but conducted eight tests in the senior event.” Yadav said.

Athletics was no different. Just five samples were collected from the Junior Nationals last year. And the AFI Secretary, C. K. Valson, was quoted by HT as saying that no dope tests were conducted at the National cross-country meet at Bhopal, also last year.

The competitions where testing has been conducted this year, as per NADA Newsletter, included the Services Best Physique Championships, the Chief Minister’s State-level athletics championships at Madurai, the Chief Minister’s State-level weightlifting championships at Thanjavur, the Delhi University Inter-College Powerlifting and Best Physique Championships and an Under-19 football tournament at Hyderabad and Vizag.

The Open National is the No. 1 athletics championships in the country. In its 57th year this time, the Open suffered because of large-scale absenteeism. Yet, there were quite some “incredible” performances. NADA could have been  very  effective there. People who attended the meet informed this writer that quite a few athletes seemed to have known in advance that there would be no testing and came "well prepared"! Surprising then that some of the best in the business chose to stay away. CWG qualification could have been simplified.

“My suggestion is that athletes who are getting TOPs support should be tested and cleared minimum four times a year (out of competition) for doping. Our system needs to be more vigilant and proactive to ensure rights of clean athletes are protected,” Anju George, India’s lone World Championships medallist, is said to have written to the Sports Ministry, according to the Express report. Anju is one of the Government Observers in athletics, the other being P. T. Usha.

Anju’s concern is genuine. To add to her suggestion, one would be tempted to say “make it six to eight times of out-of-competition testing per registered pool athlete through the year.”

Deliberately targeted?

But NADA seems to consider testing an athlete about half a dozen times a year rather unwarranted! Too harsh perhaps?

A PTI report in February stated: “NADA said it has also come to its notice that some athletes were targeted deliberately by their federations.

“Instances were observed where NADA was unduly targeting some athletes and repeatedly testing them time and again, even more than 4 to 5 times a year, which now stands discontinued,” the body stated.

Targeted deliberately by their federations?

One always had this notion that NADA was the sole testing authority in India. Has it changed?

Targeting has to be done by NADA. Targeting is not a hitherto unknown tool that NADA stumbled upon in 2016. It is prescribed in the WADA Code; has been there since the Code came into being.

If NADA had not been able to do much target-testing, especially in athletics, it was only because it did not have the expertise to draw up a meaningful list for its registered testing pool, leave alone identify the top “suspects” among them for special target testing.

Even now, two years after NADA managed to compile a list of 41 athletes for its Registered Pool, it is doubtful whether the body has the most obvious cases in athletics in that RTP. (RTP is a list where an athlete has to provide his/her “whereabouts” on a quarterly basis to make himself/herself available for out-of-competition testing at a chosen location for one hour every day,)

Let’s presume, NADA has struck pay-dirt in its fight against doping by concentrating on out-of-competition target-testing.

Figures do not match

The statistics, however, do not match the NADA estimates and assessment. In 2015, when the new, revised Code came into being, NADA tested 894 ‘in-competition’ samples in athletics and came up with 19 adverse analytical findings (AAFs). Of the 513 out-of-competition samples, none came positive.

Firm figures are not available for 2016 which WADA should be releasing any time now. However, from the data that could be compiled, one arrived at a rough count of two sanctioned cases out of 15 disposed of so far in athletics in 2016 as being ‘out-of-competition’ ones. The rest were from ‘in-competition’ tests.

In 2017, out of 29 cases in all sports, either sanctioned or going through a hearing process, there are seven out-of-competition cases. And there are nine cases in all in athletics, all of them from ‘in-competition’ tests.

The idea of catching the dopers unawares through “surprise tests” is good and may work provided the “surprise” element is maintained in such ‘missions’.  Quite often the athletes get tipped off or else they just go "on leave" from the Patiala camp. Also of importance in this exercise would be the co-operation of coaches and camp authorities with the testing team, quite often missing, according to observers. 

One example in 2015 would suffice to drive home the point that ‘intelligence-based’ out-of-competition testing is very difficult to accomplish.  A dope control officer delegated by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) made two visits to the LNCPE grounds, Thiruvananthapuram, to “catch” two women 400m runners but on both occasions they slipped through under his very nose. There are any number of such instances that people narrate when it comes to NADA testing.

The Open National, Inter-State Championships and the Federation Cup should be ‘must’ in NADA’s Test Distribution Plan for athletics. There should be more than 100 samples collected at each of these championships; closer to 150 would be ideal.

The rest including Indian Grand Prix and any last-minute ‘trial meet’ etc could be tackled depending on what could be at stake from such meets. If a qualification is at stake, redouble the efforts. NADA should also not forget Junior National meets.

Last year NADA said that the NSFs were told to provide their calendars. NADA should not wait for an “invite” for doping control arrangements. The AFI Medical Committee Chairman, Dr Arun Mendiratta, stated this time that he had informed NADA about the Open National in July.

If a yearly calendar is prepared by NADA, even with tentative/available dates, it would be useful for it to focus on ‘in-competition’ testing where required. Testing at Rajasthan State weightlifting championships and Delhi University Best Physique competition is okay, provided you don’t forget your main menu. And that has to be the Senior National Championship in every major Olympic discipline, the most ‘vulnerable’ like athletics and weightlifting getting top priority.

Biological passport

The Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) that NADA plans to bring in by 2018 will also be a useful protocol to make life that much tougher for the prospective cheat. But that in itself is not going to nab them by the dozen. It will be a slow process, mainly to pinpoint abnormalities to be followed up with target testing.

NADA’s “catch” so far has been impressive. More than 852 positive cases reported and processed or being processed. That is not just because of NADA’s ability to relentlessly pursue the cheats but also because of the widespread practice of doping that goes on in the country.

The numbers would go up now since NADA has started testing again in powerlifting and bodybuilding, two disciplines that invariably turn in dopers by the dozen. Athletics had topped the Indian charts in 2014 (29 out of 95) and 2016  (23 out of 76) while being second in 2015 (24 out of 120) behind weightlifting (56). Churning out dope-'positive' numbers, as the Russians have been doing for years, may not eventually prove that the country is "clean" from a doping perspective. 

Olympic sports need more attention, athletics in particular. If those hunting for “talent” is fooled by dope-induced performances, as had been the case during the past few years, then funds would be drained through schemes like the TOPs and Khelo India with some “great potential” failing to blossom on the big stage.

Include every TOPs-funded athlete in the NADA RTP, test them six or eight or ten times a year if need be. Let the Government also make sure the recipients of Khelo India annual scholarship, especially in the disciplines where doping is common, are tested regularly so that the Olympic dream could be realised.

NADA has recently advertised for a legal officer and investigator. The Sports Ministry has sought an international expert as a consultant. Things should perk up if everyone concerned work together to provide a “level playing field” for the “clean athletes”.

The moment someone says, “we don’t want to harass an athlete with five or six tests a year” you have false-started. They normally put a DQ against your name!