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)