Off to Spala again (Part II)

There is speculation about Nirmala Sheoran's comeback

How did the women fare in 2016? Nirmala Sheoran (left), the No. 1 woman and the only qualifier for individual 400m for Rio, sprung herself only at the inter-State, the final selection meet, and clocked 51.48s. It is not her style to be part of batches catching flights to foreign locations. She trained alone and, not unexpectedly, turned in a 53.03s in the Olympics to go out in the preliminary round.

The AFI has indicated that Nirmala could be competing again in the inter-State this month in a bid to make it to the Asian Games squad. Should such an athlete who apparently was unavailable for dope-testing by NADA the past few months despite being in its registered testing pool, be allowed to compete without being tested a few times? This is a question AFI and NADA have to answer after consultations. Since NADA does not disclose whether an athlete was tested or not during the preceding months, there is no certainty about Nirmala having been tested. At least one colleague suggested that she was tested last at the Asian championships in Bhubaneswar in July, 2017. She was recently dropped from its RTP by NADA.

Jisna trains at home, comes second

Jisna Mathew, P. T. Usha’s protégé, the recent Asian junior champion for a second time, was another athlete who preferred to train at home in the Olympic year. In fact, Usha doesn’t allow her athletes to go abroad for training, preferring to do it at her school near Koyilandy, in  Kozhikode District. Jisna improved her season best of 53.74s in New Delhi Fed Cup to a PB of 53.14s for the second place in the inter-State in Hyderabad. Was it a reminder to Ogorodnik and the authorities that his well laid-out plans of a long training programme in Poland had flopped? Though Ogorodnik's trainees did not compete in Hyderabad, Jisna had bettered their timings, barring that of M. R. Poovamma, with her PB. Anilda Thomas, though she was part of the Spala batch, was not considered to be from the Ogorodnik stable.

The other two, who formed the relay team were  Poovamma and Anilda. Poovamma had timings of 52.60s and 52.57s at home before she improved it to 52.31 in Bydgoszcz. She slipped slightly to 52.85s in Bengaluru in July.

Anilda clocked her PB of 52.40s in the Fed Cup in New Delhi. She couldn’t improve on that through an arduous season though there were a couple of sub-53s after that.

Two women trained at home, one clocked her best at home before going to Poland, and one improved marginally through the season. Among the others, Ashwini A.C., who was suspended for a doping offence in 2011, made it among the reserves. She was the lone survivor from “Yuriy’s batch”, identified so by athletes and coaches to recall the 2011 doping incident involving six women. Debashree Majumdar completed the six-member relay team as the last reserve. The others from  the Spala batch who could not make it into the relay team were : Jauna Murmu, Priyanka Panwar and Sini Jose.

A court case

Anu Raghavan, who was also at Spala, but whose PB of 53.54s came at home, fought a court case to displace Ashwini and get herself selected but failed only because time left for the proceedings to go on was too short. That was the story of our 400m runners in 2016. The relay team could not make it to the Olympic final, clocking 3:29.53 compared to the 3:27.88 in Bengaluru. The team’s Olympic qualification was almost certain through the season.

Is it the weather in Europe that then is supposed to provide the setting for Indian athletes to train prior to a major international championship? Or is it the food? These questions normally come up but there never had been a clear answer to these.

The weather of course has to be far better than the summer temperatures of India, especially in the northern parts of the country. But then Jakarta in August is not going to be cool for that matter.

The food in Spala was not the best that the athletes enjoyed, according to this report. The Indian athletes, as per this report, were apparently in favour of a little spicy food which they could not get in Poland last time. (However, the authorities seemed to have stuck to Spala this time, too despite apprehensions on the gastronomic front).

In any case, with nearly Rs 700 per day per head being given by Government as board expenses for athletes in national camps (apart from Rs 400-plus for supplements per head), there is no reason why India cannot provide nutritious, palatable, wholesome food to its athletes at camps. Recent complaint by the chief men’s hockey coach about quality of food and hygiene in SAI, Bengaluru, might give one the feeling it would be better to train in places like Spala or Yalta, but that situation has to be rectified; sooner the better.

The needle controversy

The international anti-doping agencies must have taken note of the expulsion of two Indian athletes in Gold Coast for breaching the “no needles” policy during the Commonwealth Games. The Indian athletes will need to exercise extreme care since the focus would be on them given the country’s record in doping since 2013.

In 2016, three top athletes, shot putter Inderjeet Singh, sprinter Dharmabir Singh and quarter-miler Priyanka Panwar were caught doping. Dharambir is serving an eight-year suspension since that happened to be his second. Priyanka too had been slapped with an eight-year suspension since she was also in the famous 2011 batch that received two-year sanctions. She has, however, appealed her suspension and the hearing is ongoing.

Another athlete, hurdler Jithin Paul, who was part of the Spala batch in 2016,  now slapped with a four-year ban for possession of meldonium, has also appealed the decision against him. Recovery of needles from personal kits and banned drugs from rooms of athletes can only point towards doping practices. Committees and hearing panels may eventually reprieve them but there cannot be a “clean” image after that.

Whatever be the reasons that force the AFI to send athletes abroad for training, along with coaches hired from foreign countries and based in India, for years in certain cases, the ultimate clincher would be medals. Government wants medals and nothing else. No medal could have been expected from Rio. But more than one place in the final would not have been too high an expectation either.

Last time in the Incheon Asian Games, the Indian athletes bagged only two gold medals, Seema Antil in discus and the women’s longer relay team. The count should drastically go up this time for Indian athletics to justify the high priority and the generous, if not lavish, funding that the Government has provided it. By the way, the constant harping on “world-class facilities” in reference to training locations abroad only exposes the archaic infrastructure we have in our country despite al the talk of 50 Olympic medals by 2024.

(Concluded)
Part I is here
Updated: 16 June, 2018: A reference to the  Jakarta Asian Games also having a 'no-needle' policy at the games village, venues etc, like the CWG had in Gold Coast, in its anti-doping regulations, has been removed since it would seem, at least for the moment, that there is no such policy in place.
Updated 29 June, 2018: Since the last update, the Indian Olympic Association has clarified that "no needle" policy would be there after all during Asian Games. The OCA Medical Commission had already informed NOCs of the regulations.

Spala is the favourite base once more for quarter-milers (Part I)

Muhammed Anas (right) winning the Asian championships 400m gold in Bhubaneswar in July, 2017, chased by Arokia Rajiv towards the finish. The two are once again in the forefront of India's relay campaign for the Asian Games. _Pic Courtesy: G. Rajaraman

The Olympic Training Centre at Spala, Poland, is reputed to be one of the best in the world. It was described as one of the top two in Europe by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) Secretary, C. K. Valson, in 2016 when a batch of 38 Indian athletes trained there in preparation for the Rio Olympics.

The Sportstar quoted Valson thus at that time: “The Spala Olympic Centre is in the top two training facilities in Europe and one of the best in the world. We are thankful to (Ambassador of Poland) Tomasz Lukaszuk for his support,” AFI Secretary General C. K. Valson said at a media interaction.

The batch included 400m runners in both sections, mainly making a bid to qualify in the relays for the Rio Olympics, racewalkers and javelin throwers.

Rio proved yet another disappointing experience for the Indian athletes, with only steeplechaser Lalita Babar making the final.

This time, in preparation for the Asian Games in Jakarta, India has again sent its 400m runners to Spala with the Russia-born American coach Galina Bukharina and support staff. Kiev and Yalta used to be the favourite training destinations of AFI squads in the past. Strife in Ukraine prevented such trips during the past few years. Spala has gained the latest AFI vote, it would seem.

Once again, the focus is on the relay teams and hence seven runners each in the 400m in either section have been chosen for the Spala stint. A group of javelin throwers are training at Kuortane, Finland, while the middle and long-distance runners are based at Thimpu, Bhutan.

Olympic qualification at stake in 2016

Unlike in 2016, when qualification for the Olympics was the prime target in every athlete’s sights, there should be no worries this time at least for the leading athletes. Most of them have made the cut-off marks prescribed by the AFI (not to be confused with qualification since there can be minor deviations in the AFI guidelines in contrast to, say, an Olympic qualification mark). Of course, there is this business of repeating or coming close to those marks in the Inter-State in Guwahati from June 26 to make sure of selection.

“if they are not competing regularly in Europe, then why have they gone there with our own coaches and support staff”, asked a coach familiar with training methods towards peaking for a major competition, in this case the Asian Games in Jakarta in August.

Despite such apprehensions, the Spala batch seemed to have started off well with almost everyone turning in a good effort in their first meet in Poland, at Gliwice. Particularly impressive were Hima Das who clocked a PB 23.22s in winning the 200m and Muhammed Anas whose 200m win came in a PB 20.74s. Both had clocked PBs in the Commonwealth Games 400m, Hima a stunning 51.32s and Anas a national-record-breaking   45.31 seconds.

The question will then be, how far can they reach this season?

Hima is an unknown potential who broke through from nowhere this season to clock some of the most sensational timings seen in Indian athletics in a long, long time. In her first season in the 400m she has taken her PB to 51.32s in just two meets. Only three other Indians, Manjeet Kaur, K. M. Beenamol and Chitra Soman, have clocked better. Not even the great P. T. Usha (NR of 51.61s in 1985 that stood for 15 years) has clocked close to Hima’s best!

Is the Assam junior the most exceptional athletics talent that we have seen in a long time? We will have to wait and see for a couple of more years at least to know how much Hima can improve in both the 200m and 400m at the Asian and world level if she continues to compete in these two events.

Anas has had a tremendous run from 2016. Just when one thought this year he might not be able to return the national records that he had been turning in in the 400m, he came up with that 45.31s in the Commonwealth Games.

But the topic here is not the improvement shown by Hima Das or Anas but the necessity of a training camp in Spala for our 400m runners accompanied by our own coaches in the light of what was achieved in 2016. The issue gets sharply highlighted when one looks at the field in which the Indians are competing in their main event, the 400m, in both sections.

Competing among themselves

At Gliwice, the top four men and the top five women in the 400m were Indians. They must have felt like being in a meet at Patiala, Chennai or Bengaluru! In Wroclaw where the Indians competed on June 13, the top three in the men’s and top five among women, in the 400, were Indians.

It is not that Poland lacks quality competition. On June 8, at Chorzow, the top two men in 400m ran sub-45. Third was Polish Karol Zalewski in 45.15s. In the women’s 400m, the top five timed sub-52s; there were three Poles in that. The top Polish woman, Justina Swiety-Ersetic (51.11s) beat none other than the great Allyson Felix (51.35s).

Let’s look back at what happened in 2016 in the run-up to the Olympic Games.

If the aim for the training at a foreign location is at least qualification followed by a season best performance in a global or continental meet, then the Spala exercise in 2016 was a failure. Mind you, despite criticism in the media against he being brought back after the “doping scandal” of 2011, Ukrainian coach Yuriy Ogorodnik was engaged, not just for the women’s 4x400m team but also for the men’s longer relay team.

Our top male quarter-miler Muhammed Anas returned two national record timings of 45.44s and 45.40s on two consecutive days in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in June, 2016. Less than seven weeks later after having attended a camp of around six weeks in Poland, he returned 45.95s for a sixth-place finish in the first-round heats of the Olympics and was eliminated.

Arokia Rajiv, who was the No. 1 quarter-miler in the country till Anas came along, had also bettered a national record that season. That was 45.47s in the Fed Cup in New Delhi on 29 April. Through about two months of hard training in Poland, Rajiv could not better that and failed to clinch a place in the individual event for the Olympics. The qualification standard stood at 45.40s. He timed 46.24s in winning the final trial in Bengaluru on 11 July. Anas and Rajiv are once again the leading figures in India's 4x400m relay team.

P. P. Kunhumohammed, the third best 400m runner that season, also had his personal best 46.08s in New Delhi in April. In June and July he had two timings of 46.24s in Bydgoszcz and Bengaluru.

Ayyasamy Dharun completed the quartet that clocked two national records that season, 3:02.17 in Erzurum, Turkey on 12 June, and that awe-inspiring 3:00.91 in Bengaluru on 11 July, the last date for qualification. That timing ensured that the team would go to Rio. Dharun also returned his PB of 46.30 in New Delhi in April and then went through an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the Olympic qualification.

It was unfortunate that the men’s relay team got disqualified for a faulty exchange  in the heats after finishing seventh in 3:02.24.(Britain was the other team to be disqualified in the same heat).

That disqualification apart, what did the male quarter-milers achieve from their Spala sojourn that was inexplicably shortened when the team was asked to come home and compete in the inter-State meet in Hyderabad? The original plan was to train in Poland right up to August.

Back in 2010 when the question was raised about an extended camp in Yalta, Ukraine, a Government official had rather suggestively remarked that it seemed the Black Sea breeze was very beneficial for our athletes. Spala might yet beat the record of Kiev and Yalta in 2010.

(Contd part II)

NADA cuts its Registered Testing Pool by more than half in athletics

Representative pic_ courtesy G. Rajaraman

Last November, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) seemed to have drastically changed its policy regarding ‘whereabouts’-based testing.

From a passive agency, content to have a Registered Testing Pool (RTP) for the sake of having such an arrangement, with 42 track and field athletes providing the bulk of the list, it seemed ready to crack down on the dopers with an enlarged list. As many as 64 track and field athletes were included in a pool of 178.

In the Asian Games year, one would have expected NADA to pursue the dopers more vigorously than any time in the past with its beefed-up RTP in athletics as well as in other sports. Of course, the athletics list was far from perfect but that was something that could have got rectified during the course of the year.

Even as the media was focusing on the “disappearance” of quarter-miler Nirmala Sheoran, who was in the NADA RTP list of 64 in athletics last year, came the news that the list had been revised and the Haryana athlete’s name was no longer there.

But the bigger shock was when one accessed the NADA website on May 29, 2018. From an impressive list of 64 in athletics the figure had shrunk to 25! The overall total was 113, which was 65 less than the previous year.

Could NADA be doing this in the Asian Games year, with the games less than three months away in Jakarta? That was the question that many of us asked among ourselves.

The case of Nirmala Sheoran

Would NADA have tested Nirmala during the five-month period she was in its RTP? Why should NADA exclude her at all since her past strategy suggested she could spring a surprise any time by competing in a selection trial before a major international competition? Or else, has she retired? The fact that the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) continued to plead ignorance about her whereabouts even after it entered her name in the preliminary list of entries for the Asian Games showed how things could reach comical proportions in India.

NADA does not post much on its website though one would have expected it to use that facility to the maximum for the benefit of the athletes, coaches, support personnel, the federations and the media.

The NADA rules demand that NADA publish the names of the tested athletes and the dates of testing. “14.4 Statistical Reporting: NADA shall publish at least annually a general statistical report of its Doping Control activities, with a copy provided to WADA. NADA may also publish reports showing the name of each Athlete tested and the date of each Testing.”.

To the best of one’s knowledge, NADA has never published the names of the athletes tested, in clear violation of its own rules, and that of the WADA Code. It does have a testing statistics record on its website, but only for the year 2016 at present. When will we see the rest from 2009 onwards?

Such statistics like the names of the athletes tested, and testing dates, would be reassuring to “clean” athletes since they can have the comforting thought that the authorities are keeping track of prospective dopers. Such lists would also give an opportunity to the media to point out who are all not being tested at all or not being tested in time. WADA expects anti-doping authorities to test their RTP athletes around three to four times a year, out of competition.

By cutting down its testing in athletics, NADA has managed to avoid the top-three position that the country had occupied for three successive years from 2013 among the leading ‘doping nations’ of the world. In 2016, India, with 69, ranks only sixth jointly with Russia for the anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs).

Misses target of 5000 samples

NADA, on the advice of NITI Aayog had targeted at least 5000 samples for 2017 and even talked about touching 7000, but eventually it ended up with only 3594 samples including 282 blood samples.  Even then, it trumpeted its achievement by announcing that it had exceeded the target of 3000 samples that WADA had fixed. The drop in number of positives from previous years was understandable (lesser number of samples tested), no matter that NADA made it out as though it was because of its tighter controls and better education programmes.

Athletics has suffered in the process. NADA skipped the Open Nationals last year and also missed the inter-university meet and the National cross-country championships. It collected less than 25 samples from the National inter-state meet, according to athletics officials.

This year, NADA has once again started on the wrong foot. The Federation Cup junior championships at Coimbatore, presented NADA with an excellent opportunity to ‘screen’ young athletes prior to their selection for the Asian Juniors in Japan.

NADA missed the first day in Coimbatore! It has become some sort of routine to miss the opening day of an athletics championships for NADA. On the second day, when Gurindervir Singh clocked a junior national record of 10.47s in the 100m, officials looked around for dope-testers. None was in sight.

The 100m was postponed from the opening day due to bad weather. Gurindervir was told to wait as a two-member NADA team set up shop by second afternoon. But they wouldn’t test him, according to AFI sources, no matter that AFI officials told them to test since he had bettered a national record and ratification, at least in the understanding of the officials, required a dope test clearance.

No one told them to test sprinters!

The NADA team then told officials that they were told to collect just 20 samples. And the junior men’s 100m was not in the list that it was given by NADA, New Delhi! Apparently, the distance events were marked but not the sprints!

Twenty urine samples from an athletics meet having 44 events (men and women) after taking the trouble to send a team was a waste of effort and funds.

Is it the resource crunch that has now reduced the RTP list from 64 to 25 and forcing NADA to test 20 athletes from a junior national meet?  

The top woman quarter-miler this season in India, Hima Das, who clocked a sensational 51.32s in the Commonwealth Games last April, the best time in Asia till then (since bettered by Bahrain’s Nigeria-born Salwa Eid Naser (50.51s) in the Diamond League in Rome in May), is not in the latest RTP. Also missing are two of the national-record-setters this season, A. Dharun (400m hurdles) and Tejaswin Shankar (high jump).

Other prominent athletes missing in the RTP included Ajay Kumar Saroj (Asian champion in 1500m), M. Sreeshankar (long jump), who was leading the Asian junior lists and Indian senior lists for 2018, at the time of writing, with 7.99m, top woman sprinter Dutee Chand, all the four woman 400m runners behind Hima Das, in the year’s lists, plus woman steeplechasers Sudha Singh and Chinta Yadav.

The four athletes currently in the RTP of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), 400m runner Muhammed Anas, shot putter Tejinder Pal Toor, long jumper Nayana James, and shot putter Manpreet Kaur, have been removed from the NADA list. Rightly so, since the earlier duplication was merely a waste of resources. Manpreet is facing an anti-doping rule violation charge at present. Javelin thrower Devinder Singh Kang, who was in the IAAF list earlier has now been removed but retains his place in the NADA list. He is facing his second doping charge, for a steroid, having been given a reprimand in the first, a charge of marijuana use.

TOPS athletes being spared?

One would have thought that all the athletes included in the TOPS would automatically be placed in the NADA RTP. That has not happened. The TOPS athletes would be taking home Rs 50,000 per month as stipend alone.

Already, various groups of athletes have spread out for training to Poland, Finland and Bhutan. More foreign visits and training bases could be in store before the Asian Games. Has NADA the funds to test at least the TOPS athletes or its RTP athletes in foreign locations with the help of WADA or other NADOs? If not, what is NADA supposed to do with its funding received from the Sports Ministry? Test athletes in Rajasthan powerlifting meet or Delhi best physique meet? Or Bengal state athletics or Jharkhand athletics?
A registered testing pool allows the testing authority to keep track of its athletes throughout the year. Athletes are expected to provide their whereabouts on a quarterly basis including a specific location for testing every day where an athlete would be present at least for one hour during a specified time for testing. Missing a test or failing to file his/her whereabouts information can be flagged by the authority in case of no valid explanation. A combination of three missed tests/filing failures in a 12-month period may attract a suspension of up to two years.

Athletics was not the only discipline that got neglected in the revised RTP list of NADA. Weightlifting had its list cut from 26 to just five, wrestling from 37 to a mere four and badminton from 14 to three!

Weightlifting, with athletics, had been topping the Indian doping charts for the past few years. The latest furore over the positive test reported for 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sanjita Chanu, in an out-of-competition test done in the US last November, has once again brought the doping focus back to the weightlifting.

All the leading sports federations can claim in the coming months that their sport is ‘clean’ and they believe in ‘zero tolerance’ towards doping. The truth is fewer and fewer top-level athletes are getting tested. Or else they could be based abroad and beyond the reach of NADA when it matters most. Just before the Asian Games, NADA will, as usual, start searching for athletes to complete the formality of testing. The SAI and the Ministry may claim “every one of our selected athletes had been tested prior to departure”. Those smart dope cheats among them would have got the traces of drugs washed out weeks before!

(Updated 07 June, 2018)