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Muhammed Anas and Arokia Rajiv at the Asian championships
in Bhubaneswar in 2017. NADA did not test both in its
out-of-competition testing this season. Photo_courtesy G. Rajaraman |
Are athletes getting tested by NADA 10 times a year?
Hockey getting
highlighted in this debate has unwittingly overshadowed the farcical out-of-competition or 'whereabouts'-based testing in athletics, something that this journalist has pointed out through the years.
It is not
the numbers alone that matter in this anti-doping exercise. It has been made
clear by NADA officials including the Director-General in the recent past that
it is the “quality” of testing that matters and not mere number of samples . We have to agree with this assessment
of course.
But when the
number of samples collected in athletics keep sliding (see chart below) despite
the sport occupying either the No 1 or 2 slot among the dopers in the country,
one has to wonder what exactly could be the modus operandi. Is it an attempt to
show lesser ‘positive’ since the higher authorities are concerned that India
ranks high among the dopers? Or is it an attempt to prove that the awareness
campaign that NADA had pursued with extra vigour through the past few years has
started paying off?
See the way
the sample numbers in athletics have dwindled through the years. From a record
of 1000-odd samples from 2012 through to 2016, it was cut down to 800-plus in
2017 and now looks headed towards a target of around 600-700.
The NADA DG
is, as always, optimistic about touching the target of 3500 total samples by
the year-end though the last count was 2062 only. Athletics accounted for just
362 samples out of that, 90 of them in out-of-competition tests. We have to keep in mind that an athletics championship will normally involve anything from 44 to 47 events. It would be foolish to say, "we will collect 20 samples and be done with it."
After having
collected around 50 samples at the National Inter-State meet in Guwahati in
June that acted as the final selection trials for the Asian Games in
Jakarta-Palembang, NADA is learnt to have touched the 75-sample mark at the
Open National at Bhubaneswar in September.
That was of
no great importance from a broader perspective except for boosting numbers
since a large number of top athletes skipped the meet, and the prime focus this
season, Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games, was already behind us. Today,
as NADA gets ready to boost numbers, the athletics season is over.
NADA talked
about targeted testing at the Guwahati inter-State meet, indicating that
in-competition testing had also become something of an out-of-competition
testing format. It is fine to target athletes in a competition, but when you
miss the medal winners, sometimes all of them in many events, the trust that
the rest of the athletes have in the system evaporates. At least, do not
announce on the opening day “we are here to collect 50-60 samples” as it
happened at Guwahati.
Boosting testing numbers through institutional meets or Khelo India would not serve the main
purpose of an anti-doping programme_test athletes at the elite level, provide a
level-playing field to national-level athletes who are aspiring to represent
the country in the Olympics.
NADA started
its Registered Testing Pool sometime during the month of May 2015. To begin
with it had around 41 track and field athletes in that pool. No other sport was
there in the RTP. In due course, weightlifting was added and then, gradually,
other sports.
By February
2016 that list was updated and a further updated list, rather unwieldy, was
published in November 2017 which lasted up to May 2018. The athletes’ component drastically shrunk
from 64 in 2017 to 25 in 2018. That was the first indication that NADA would
not be going all out to test track and field athletes out-of-competition in the
important year of the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games.
The crux of the strategy, it
seemed, was to cut down on numbers and thus get lesser number of positive tests
in order to avoid the No. 3 status (No 6 later on) that the country enjoyed among dopers from
2013 to 2015. The earlier plans of reaching up to 7000 samples a year seem to have been given up.
The AFI
chief, Adille Sumariwalla, is a staunch anti-doping campaigner in his statements.
He has argued these past few weeks on Twitter that dope-testing was strict in
training camps, testers land up in camps every other day and test athletes and
those outside are prone to doping since they do not get tested that much.
One has
argued, in vain, that mere claim of athletes in camps being tested “every other
day” would be of no help unless we come to know who were tested, how many times
each and when all.
Now, we have
the answers. And they are revealing, if not startling, as was to be expected
only.
It now turns
out that even those listed in the Registered Testing Pool of NADA are rarely
tested. Thirty-two of the 64 RTP athletes from the 2017 batch were not tested
at all, according to Mihir Vasavda. Of the 25 in the May 2018 list, eight were not
tested at all!
NADA strategy
Talking to Vasavda, one could get a fair idea about the testing strategy adopted by
NADA. The policy of late has been “we don’t want to harass the athletes, we
will go by our risk assessment.” That has apparently allowed the athletes the time
and space in case they were interested in something that the higher-ups in the
AFI say they are not even familiar with!
Forget the RTP
for a moment. Try to assess the significance of the following testing account:
The country’s
top quarter-miler, Muhammed Anas, who improved upon his own national record
twice this season (45.31s and 45.24s), was not tested out-of-competition even
once by NADA! He was indeed tested at Patiala during the Federation Cup and at
Guwahati on the day he won the 200m in the Inter- State championships. It must
be mentioned here that Anas has been in the IAAF/AIU RTP till recently and could
have been expected to be tested by the latter. That should not mean that there is a bar on NADA testing him or there was no need for NADA to test him.
(Like Anas, two other Indian athletes who were in the IAAF/AIU RTP this season, Asiad champion shot putter Tejinder Pal Singh Toor and woman long jumper Nayana James (PB 6.55m) were also not tested out-of-competition by NADA. We will know how many times they were tested by AIU only when it publishes annual testing statistics sometime early next year.)
Arokia
Rajiv, the No. 2 Indian in the 400m, was also not tested out-of-competition
even once during this season! NADA has attempted to classify his test at
Patiala on March 6 as “out of competition” but that happened to be the day on
which he competed in the heats and final of the 400m which he eventually finished
fourth (47.02s). There is no method by which NADA or any other agency can
convert an in-competition test, done on the day of the event, into an
out-of-competition one.
Rajiv was
also tested at the Guwahati Inter-State where he won the 400m (45.78s SB).
Between March 6 (Patiala) and June 29 (Guwahati) Rajiv was not tested. Nor is
there a record of any test by NADA post-June 29.
Why Rajiv or
for that matter many others including Anas, training at Jablonec, Czech
Republic, were not tested by NADA towards the end of July, when it carried out
a few tests in Europe, with less than a month to go for the Asian Games, will put a question mark over NADA's intentions.
One test towards the end of July
Many of the
athletes who eventually made it into the Indian team for the Asian Games were
either not tested at all out-of-competition or else tested right at the end of
July alone with Asian Games athletics competitions scheduled to start at
Jakarta on Aug 25.
Surprisingly,
Haryana’s Nirmala Sheoran, who has this habit of springing up just in time for
a major selection meet and then disappearing, was tested only once during the
season, in-competition at the Guwahati inter-State where she clocked her
personal best 51.25s for the 400m while taking the silver behind Hima Das
(51.13s). Hima went onto improve it to 50.79s for the silver in the Asian
Games. Like in the case of many others, NADA had the chance (in tests outsourced
to national agencies) to test Nirmala at Jablonec but it did not. Hima was tested four times in all including once out-of-competition. The in-competition tests included two in Guwahati within the space of two days.
Among those
tested while in Europe were: P. P. Kunhumohammed, Ayyasamy Dharun and K. S.
Jeevan and Hima Das, M. R. Poovamma, V. K. Vismaya, Saritaben Gayakwad and Anu
Raghavan, all 400m runners or 400m hurdlers.
Those who
underwent two out-of-competition tests during the season included Kunhumohammed,
Saritaben Gayakwad, V. K. Vismaya, Anu Raghavan and Purnima Hembram (heptathlon).
Swapna Barman tested once in competition
Incidentally,
Swapna Barman, whose sensational heptathlon gold in the Asian Games despite a
variety of aches and pains that caught the attention of the national and
international media and prompted shoe companies and sponsors to queue up before
her home, was tested only once. That was in-competition at Guwahati where she
took the second place behind Hembram to gain selection for the games.
Whether
between an in-competition test and an out-of-competition test or between two
out-of-competition tests, athletes generally had a gap of around three to four-and-a-half
months! And this NADA called its out-of-competition test distribution plan
that apparently had the approval of WADA since it was designed on the basis of “revised
risk assessment” etc.
Top 16 do not figure in RTP
Just
imagine, NADA’s Registered Testing Pool in athletics did not contain a single runner
from the top-16 this year in women’s 400m! The 17th, Anilda Thomas, who had a
best of 54.33s in the only national meet she competed in this season, Indian GP
at Patiala in February, was retained apparently on the strength of her previous
two years’ performances.
We all know
the women’s 400m had been in focus of the authorities since the 2010 Commonwealth Games at home.
It had always been of course but the CWG brought into focus a bunch of women
who could captivate the audience with their 'splendid running'. Six of them were
caught for doping next year and the enthusiasm died down a bit before being
revived prior to the Rio Olympic Games.
Neither the
AFI nor the Sports Authority of India (SAI) would seem to have given up hopes of
an Olympic medal through the women’s 4x400m relay team. In that background, how
do you explain the top 16 women this season being ignored for the NADA RTP? Or the top two runners in the 4x400m line-up, Hima and Poovamma, being tested just once each out-of-competition towards the end of July?
Among those
who did not undergo out-of-competition tests this season but were part of at
least the Asian Games squad were: Gold medallists at the Asian Games, middle
distance runners Jinson Johnson and Manjit Singh; distance runners Sanjivani Jadhav
and L. Suriya; racewalkers K. T. Irfan and Manish Rawat; javelin thrower
Shivpal Singh and long jumper N. V. Neena. In fact, Neena, after one
in-competition test in February was not tested at all, in-competition or out,
through the rest of the season! And she happens to be in the NADA RTP and she was training in India!
Asian Games bronze-winning discus thrower Seema Antil Punia was tested out-of-competition once on 8 March. After that there was no test at all. She was exempted from the Inter-State selection meet and was in Russia towards her final preparations for the Asian Games. Seema is an athlete in the NADA RTP.
Asian Games silver-winning steeplechaser Sudha Singh was also tested once out-of-competition in March. She was then tested during the inter-State in June.
In its enthusiasm to beef up out-of-competition numbers, NADA tested athletes at meet venues a day before the competition. A case in point was Asian Games triple jump champion Arpinder Singh. He was tested out-of-competition on March 7, a day before his competition in the Fed Cup which he won (16.61m). He was never tested out-of-competition for the rest of the season. There was one in-competition test at Guwahati at the inter-State meet.
Mere claims
Despite a
claim by NADA that it had tested Indian middle distance-long-distance runners at Thimphu, it seems no tests were carried out by NADA in Bhutan.
There is an
oft-repeated claim by the higher-ups in NADA that the same athletes are being tested
“10 to 20 times” during a year. “We have only about
100-odd sportspersons who compete at the Olympics, World championships and the
big events. How many times in a year will you test them after testing the same
persons 10-20 times in a year?”
a NADA official was quoted as saying in a news report in July last.
Now, we know they are not even being tested three times out-of-competition or, as in some cases, not even once.
Test them at
least three times out-of-competition in a season as rules demand. There is no need to keep
counting the in-competition tests since that would depend entirely on an
athlete winning a medal. Even that cannot be more than three-four during a season, especially when NADA is collectng 40-50 samples from a meet. Instead of targeting an athlete during competition
which of course could be done, the best option would be to test
your RTP athletes.
Contrary to
what the NADA DG has explained in the Express report, out-of-competition
testing need not depend on ADAMS or RTP or the Internet. NADA does not need
any permission to test an athlete out-of-competition. It can test him/her at any time, any place during a season during the 6 a.m-11 p.m time slot. And in India that becomes easy in
athletics at least since the majority of them are together at camps most of the time. The same
batch of dope-testers who are supposed to be roaming around the NIS campus or
South campus in Bengaluru every other day, can ask camp authorities to call
athletes and test them, RTP or not, internet or not. The same way, NADA need not have the ADAMS-entered "whereabouts" information about athletes training abroad. Seek that from the SAI_they should know of course_ and plan a "mission". Athletes are most unlikely to "escape" to nearby countries fearing a raid though once a large batch of them packed up and left South Africa in a hurry when testers went looking for them!
Of course, NADA will have to spend some additional money to get those training in the Czech Republic, Poland, Bhutan, Oman, Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan tested. Not just once in a four-month period but twice or thrice.
Out-of-competition (OOC) testing is the bedrock on which anti-doping measures are normally mounted. If the OOC tests are spaced out intelligently, athletes would find it difficult to complete 'cycles' of doping, as per theory. (Micro-dosing, that of taking small doses of banned drugs to avoid detection, is a method athletes adopt to counter OOC testing). If you provide three to four months to an athlete in between two tests, he or she would have achieved whatever was there to achieve. Athletes evade testers when they know they are likely to test positive. That is where the Registered Testing Pool comes in. Athletes in the pool have to provide their 'whereabouts' to the anti-doping agency so that the latter would be able to keep tabs on athletes through the course of a year. A one-hour slot, for 365 days a year, at a designated place of the athlete's choice has to be kept aside for this purpose by the athlete. Three 'missed tests' can attract a sanction of up to two years.
NADA should
try to update its RTP at least once in three months. Despite having been
injured and not having competed since the Commonwealth Games, 400m runner Amoj
Jacob is still part of the RTP. So is Tintu Luka whose last competition was the
Asian championships in Bhubaneswar in
July 2017! She came down with dengue there and then developed a foot injury that did not heal enough for her to come back this season.
Javelin
thrower Devender Singh Kang had tested positive a second time in February this
year and is under provisional suspension but he too is in the RTP. High hurdler
Siddhanth Thingalaya also finds a place in the RTP despite not having performed
up to par for more than a year. Moreover he is practically based in the US.
Keeping steeplechaser Lalita Babar who made the Rio Olympics final, in the NADA RTP during a season when she competed in just one cross-country race after a year's break, also was illogical. Viewed from the angle that NADA does not want too many athletes in its list probably because of financial constraints, it has to utilize the list to maximum effect rather than pack it with inactive athletes.
Let us give
up this “athletes are tested every other day” stance. Let us also avoid this "we don't want to hound them" business. Let us get down seriously
to test them out-of-competition. Credibility of Indian athletics is at stake no matter that the Asian Games euphoria is yet to die down.
(Concluded)
Part I is here
(Updated Nov 9, 2018)
