Bring 'disappearing' athletes and camp boycotters into Registered Testing Pool

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Nirmala Sheoran winning the Fed Cup 400m at Patiala on 4 June, 2017 in 51.28s, the third best time ever by an Indian.



Are non-campers doping?
Athletes missing national camps is nothing new. Many athletes skipped the camps in 2015 and 2016 without being banned from future camps. 
There is a general feeling in athletics circles, especially within the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) that athletes who train away from national camps are engaged in doping since dope-testers hardly ever reach them. Action against the ‘errant’ athletes is quite often proposed but rarely taken. 

There is another section within the athletics fraternity which believes that camps provide a “protected environment” for doping, and athletes, especially the “favourites”, do manage to dope and get tipped off well in time to avoid dope-testers from the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA).

The fact that drugs were impounded and destroyed by the authorities at camps through the years, the fact that all the six woman quarter-milers caught in the net in 2011 were campers, the fact that a ‘doping chart’ prepared possibly by a foreign expert was in circulation in 2004 in the camp, and the fact that drugs are easily available near the NIS, Patiala, all point towards the prevalence of doping in the camps. 

When international testers came looking for Indian athletes

Most of us remember the “disappearance” of leading athletes from the Patiala camp in 2006 when WADA/IAAF came looking for a batch of athletes. A disciplinary panel was set up by the AFI to look into the ‘disappearing act’ but eventually nothing came of it. Now, there seems to be an urgency to crack the whip; pardon the cliché. The AFI has said that it would not allow those invited and still skipping the camp to compete in the selection trials for international meets. The Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, and the Asian Games in Jakarta, are scheduled next year.

This is an extreme step that might not pass legal scrutiny, but we will come to that later. There is a need to highlight another point that has come up in this AFI decision to keep “reluctant campers” away from selection meets.

This report  dated 31 October says Nirmala Sheoran, the top 400m runner of the country, has been “untraceable” for the AFI. It says it appears the AFI decision to bar camp absentees from selection meets has probably arisen out of the Nirmala episode.

Stunning timings

Nirmala had trained on her own somewhere in Haryana in 2016 also when she qualified for the Rio Olympics 400m with a stunning 51.48s in the Inter-State meet at Hyderabad. She went out in the first round in Rio with a 53.03s. Nirmala competed only in the Inter-State and the Olympics in 2016.

She appeared at the Fed Cup at Patiala this year and once again destroyed the field with another sensational 51.28s, prompting fans to acclaim her performance. She qualified for the World Championships with that timing but before going to London she won the Asian title in Bhubaneswar with a modest 52.01s.

In London, Nirmala made the semifinals, with another 52.01s, a creditable feat considering the routine manner in which Indian athletes fail on the global stage. But in the semifinal she could manage only a 53.07s and went out. It was her poorest timing in 2017. Once again, the 22-year-old Haryana athlete competed only in limited meets, the Fed Cup and Asian championships at home and the World Championships.

The top brass in the AFI was not convinced, though, even before Rio. Now, there is further cynicism. Of athletes skipping National camps, this is what the AFI chief, Adille Sumariwalla, has stated in the above report: “They keep hiding here and there, telling us ‘we will come after 15 days, we will come now, we will come later’. When they think it is safe for them, they come.”

Understandable concern

Sumariwalla’s concern is understandable. Both in Rio and London, the Indian athletes fared poorly overall. The AFI keeps projecting medals, at least for the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games, in assessments given to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the Sports Ministry but things do not pan out to expectations eventually.

But why is the AFI searching for Nirmala? Why is the NADA not doing this? And why is NADA not marking ‘missed tests’ against her name if she is not found at the place where she was expected to be at a specified point of time during the course of a day? Does NADA have her in its Registered Testing Pool (RTP)? If not, how can NADA exclude a top athlete like Nirmala?

So, we come to the disturbing conclusion that Nirmala is probably not in the NADA’s Registered Testing Pool (RTP). There can be no other explanation for NADA seeking her ‘whereabout’ information from the AFI, as one surprisingly learnt the other day.

NADA’s responsibility is to send out testers to an athlete’s chosen place for ‘whereabouts’ testing at the specified time and if found missing, initiate steps to mark a ‘missed test’. Three such misses in a 12-month period would mean a possible anti-doping rule violation that can attract a two-year suspension.

If Nirmala has not been included in the NADA RTP it is a shocking development. She topped the national lists in 400m in 2016 and this year with timings that had not been matched for over a dozen years at home, 51.48s (No. 3 in Asia) and 51.28s (No. 2 in Asia). It is natural for any follower of Indian athletics and people aware of anti-doping systems to believe that she would be there in the RTP.

NADA can seek to send a notice to the athlete through the National Federation. Say, to inform the athlete that he/she has been included in the RTP or he/she had missed a test and needed to explain things further in order to avoid a ‘strike’ against his/her name. But NADA would be expected to send a communication directly to the athlete’s registered residential address (obtained from the federation), with a copy to the NSF, in all such instances. It should not be asking the federation, “where can we find” Nirmala. It should have got her address long back and by now should have either included her in the RTP or if she is already ‘in’, then send testers to collect samples.

All that NADA needs, as per rules, is a five-day gap after posting a communication to consider that the notice was “deemed” to have been delivered. The TOPs (Olympic Podium) list should have at least triggered the process if NADA had not included current leading athletes in its ‘whereabouts’ programme.

‘Whereabouts’ information filed by chosen athletes provide an anti-doping authority a window to test the athletes at a pre-designated location opted for by the athletes for testing during a one-hour slot every day through the year. Athletes are expected to file quarterly information and may make last-minute changes, if required, through mobile phones or e-mails etc.

Timing is crucial in testing

Timing is important in any out-of-competition testing. There is no point in testing when athletes have “washed” their systems clear of traces of drugs in time for competitions. (Some advantage is always retained even after washing it out. In certain cases it may be a huge advantage).

With the Commonwealth Games coming up in April next year, NADA can now hope to test Nirmala or any other athlete, on a ‘whereabouts’-based schedule (if not already registered) only next year since January 1 will mark the beginning of a new quarter while October 1 was the last one.

If NADA had not been reviewing its ‘whereabouts’ list in all sports on a regular basis, it has gone against the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), as available in the International Standards for Testing and Investigations. It is supposed to do it at least on a quarterly basis if not earlier and then add or delete names to/from the list depending on its criteria.

NADA’s initial ‘whereabouts’ list in athletics in May 2015, contained 41 names. Three of them (shot putter Inderjeet Singh, sprinter Dharambir Singh and 400m runner Priyanka Panwar) were charged with anti-doping rule violations last year. Dharambir and Panwar have since been suspended while Inderjeet’s case is going on.

On a rough estimate at least 20 of the rest of the athletes in that list should be out of the RTP by now, if they have not been so far, since they are no longer among the top athletes or else have stopped competing regularly. At the same time, a big batch of athletes including all those chosen for the TOP scheme who are already not in the RTP could be expected to be included in the line-up. You don’t spend lakhs of rupees for training athletes abroad or hiring foreign coaches, and provide Rs 50,000 per month pocket allowance without subjecting athletes to dope tests, do you?

Those among the 19 already in the NADA RTP of 2015 (presuming that the top athletes in that list would have been retained even if NADA had updated the original list several times over) are: K. T. Irfan (20km walk), O. P. Singh (shot put), Lalita Babar and Sudha Singh (3000m steeplechase) and Annu Rani (javelin). World junior champion javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra is the only Indian athlete in the IAAF RTP at present and thus NADA may not need to include him in its RTP.

Sixteen more athletes are expected to be added to the TOPs list, among whom Arokia Rajiv, M. R. Poovamma and Anilda Thomas were in the 2015 RTP and could be expected to have been retained till now.

The ability or otherwise of NADA to test athletes training at various locations in the country, even if some of them are outside the camps, should not force the AFI to restrict a selection meet (in this case the Federation Cup and the Inter-State meet in 2018) to campers. It can, at best, argue that only the ‘campers’ and those training abroad with the permission of the AFI and SAI, may be selected to represent India, but not refuse entry to National meets. Even that would be questionable and could be challenged in courts.

Exclusion could be challenged

If the athletes training outside the camps manage to clock timings and distances that match the selection criteria and are still dropped, we may yet again have court cases like we had in 2016 when quarter-miler Anu Raghavan sought legal recourse for inclusion in the Olympic squad, and Asian 1500m winner P. U. Chithra approached Kerala High Court this year to gain her ‘legitimate right’ for inclusion in the team to World Championships. In both cases the pleas became infructuous since they were taken up rather late though the courts were inclined to rule in favour of the athletes.

Incidentally, Anu Raghavan and Anilda Thomas, along with the country’s top 400m man, Muhammed Anas, are training outside the camp in Kerala, and according to this report, are keen to pursue their own programme.

The AFI would be well advised to persuade NADA to include those athletes who are training outside camps in the RTP and advise the former to do at least two tests a month from now on up to the Commonwealth Games. If the process of RTP registration is delayed, NADA could be told to make surprise visits to known training centres of these athletes and carry out a test every fortnight or so. NADA needs to put in wholehearted efforts to achieve this. An attitude of “let’s not test them four or five times a year” will not help.

Quite often AFI officials claim that the athletes within the camps are tested every ten days or fortnight. That is what they imagine and that could be the most ideal situation to have. But in reality, the numbers are much smaller. As per WADA statistics, NADA did only 358 out-of-competition tests in athletics in 2016.

Let us assume around 100 athletes could be part of the camp every year. Let us also assume it could begin around December or January and the season could stretch up to October. Say two tests every month for ten months per athlete. That will work out to 2000 out-of-competition tests per year among campers in athletics alone. NADA did only 2699 tests, in and out of competition, in all sports put together in 2016!