(Part I is here)
(Concluded)
NADA practically ignored athletics in 2017 when
it came to competitions. It collected a meagre number of samples at the
National Inter-State last year and skipped the Open National at Chennai
altogether! It managed a limited number of samples in the inter-University
championships, that too after being asked to rush since there happened to be a
senior national record by high jumper Tejaswin Shankar, and missed the National
cross-country meet.
This year, too, there has been a reluctance to test in athletics
competitions. NADA failed to reach on
the opening day of the Fed Cup, selection trials for Commonwealth Games, at Patiala.
Then, the Junior Federation Cup, one was told, was restricted to a mere 20
samples and the senior Inter-State, the selection trials for the Asian Games,
to around 40-50.
NADA officials told AFI officials at Guwahati that it was
“target testing” athletes and it was not going after medal-winners.
Target-testing athletes at a championship, instead of doing it
out-of-competition which is the normal practice the world over, must be a new
methodology that NADA has developed.
But is it sufficient to collect 40 to 50 samples at a major
National meet having 42 events? That, too, when national team selection is at
stake?
Only NADA would be able to explain the “intelligence” that goes
into the making of such a strategy!
NADA testing in athletics: 2017
|
||
Jan
|
National School Games
|
Pune
|
All-India
Inter-University Championships
|
Coimbatore
|
|
Feb
|
National racewalking championships
|
New Delhi
|
Chief Minister’s
State-level championship
|
Madurai
|
|
April
|
National Youth championships
|
Hyderabad
|
May
|
Indian GP I
|
Patiala
|
Indian GP II
|
New Delhi
|
|
Indian GP III
|
New Delhi
|
|
June
|
Fed Cup championships
|
Patiala
|
July
|
National Inter-State
championships
|
Guntur
|
August
|
Inter-Services championships
|
Bengaluru
|
Dec
|
SGFI Schools
championship
|
Rohtak
|
All-India Police championship
|
Dehradun
|
|
Source: NADA
A hint of the reasons behind such negligence of athletics is
available in the NADA official’s explanation to the paper.
I have mentioned this earlier, but it merits repetition here
since for the second successive year “target testing” is being bandied about as
though someone in NADA has suddenly stumbled upon this great idea. “Let’s
target the most obvious candidates first, let’s include them in our RTP”, seems
to be the ‘brilliant strategy’ that has helped NADA tighten the screws on
dopers.
Only 100-odd top sportspersons?
“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? the official was quoted as saying. The
focus, the report concluded, was on “target-testing”.
Target-testing has been part of WADA Code for ages as mentioned
in previous blog pieces; it is there in the NADA rules as well. There is
nothing sensational or innovative in target-testing. That is the very essence
of out-of-competition testing based on “intelligence” gathered from fellow athletes,
coaches, officials etc.
In-competition testing should ideally be based on placings plus
a random method. Athletes would be tempted to use stimulants once they know
that testing is absent or lax. Some of them might deliberately finish out of
the top medals bracket or even skip a meet completely when they know testing is
going to be strict. The testers have to take on-the-spot decisions as far as
random selection is concerned, not sit there and study what the Head Office had
written down as instructions.
But let us get back to that statement. There is a crucial figure
there: “10-20 times in a year”. That is a fantastic achievement if this figure
is correct and if it does not include ‘in-competition’ testing.
‘In-competition’ testing will be based on placings. Normally
they are. If an athlete keeps winning, he or she is bound to be tested in the
normal course. Two senior National championships in athletics plus the Fed Cup
and a couple of Indian Grand Prix meets would mean around half a dozen meets
for an athlete and that many number of tests if he/she wins and NADA follows
the traditional pattern.
Intelligent athlete
The ‘intelligent athlete’ will not come into a competition
stuffed with steroids or having had an early-morning shot of EPO. In this ‘hide
and seek’ business, getting one or two ‘positive’ results from a national
championship is a difficult task. NADA would have realized this in recent
months when their efforts have borne little fruit.
That leaves us with ‘out-of-competition testing’. That is the
bedrock on which anti-doping efforts should be mounted. That plus the RTP.
If an athlete is tested around 15 times out of competition a
year that would be quite an effort towards weeding out the cheats. You don’t
have to do it in all sports, do it in the top two “doping sports” for the
present, athletics and weightlifting.
Are our athletes being tested enough? Are the athletes in the
RTP list being tested regularly? Was quarter-miler Nirmala Sheoran tested at
all during the five months in which she was in the RTP? These questions will be
irrelevant if NADA publishes its annual statistics along with a list of
athletes tested and the periods when they were tested, as mandated by its own
rules and the WADA Code.
Or else NADA can go more transparent and emulate the USADA which provides an athlete's 'test history', updated on a weekly basis, on its website. For example, currently one can know Justin Gatlin has been tested three times in the second quarter of 2018 and gone through nine tests in all in 2018 (Up to 27 July).
Claims of 10 to 20 times of each athlete being tested every year by NADA will then have more credibility.
There is an apparent notion now within NADA that the Biological Passport (ABP), started only this year and for which 33 samples were collected in 2017, would be the solution to athletes escaping tests or “disappearing”. The belief seems to be that even after nine months of disappearance as was the case with a leading woman quarter-miler, NADA would be able to pin the athlete down through ABP.
Or else NADA can go more transparent and emulate the USADA which provides an athlete's 'test history', updated on a weekly basis, on its website. For example, currently one can know Justin Gatlin has been tested three times in the second quarter of 2018 and gone through nine tests in all in 2018 (Up to 27 July).
Claims of 10 to 20 times of each athlete being tested every year by NADA will then have more credibility.
There is an apparent notion now within NADA that the Biological Passport (ABP), started only this year and for which 33 samples were collected in 2017, would be the solution to athletes escaping tests or “disappearing”. The belief seems to be that even after nine months of disappearance as was the case with a leading woman quarter-miler, NADA would be able to pin the athlete down through ABP.
That might not be so easy. To sanction an athlete only
based on variations in passport is a difficult task. NADA can “target-test” the
athlete or else carry out more sophisticated tests on a particular athlete’s
sample repeatedly to catch him/her.
This can partially be achieved through RTP also till
such time the ABP programme is fine-tuned and NADA is able to bring forward
cases bases on passport abnormalities alone.
But before anything else, NADA has to shed its
inhibitions about collecting larger number of samples. Niti Aayog had advised
it to collect 5000 samples in 2017. NADA increased its target, announced it
would test 7000 samples but also put a
rider: It will depend on enhanced manpower and additional budgetary allocation.
That apparently did not materialize and hence the total of 2964 urine samples
last year.
Is there a resource crunch?
If funds are a problem then the Sports Ministry needs
to urgently dispel such misgivings. Niti Aayog would be too willing to help
given the initiative it had taken in April last year. NADA has of late
increased its manpower. More would be welcome.
Athletics has topped the Indian doping list in 2014
(29), 2016 (23) and 2017 (21), taking second place in 2015 (24) behind
weightlifting (56). Yet, athletics, with an out-of-competition tally of 229
samples was even behind boxing (270 OOC samples) in 2017 testing.
It is imperative that NADA concentrates on athletics
instead of on other sports, especially non-Olympic sports unless there is a
strategy to avoid athletics and beef up annual testing numbers through other
sports.
One ‘significant’ claim by the NADA official is about
more Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) tests having been employed in 2017 to
determine variations in markers of steroid profiles. “We have increased the
number of tests to 79 for markers of steroid profile which enhanced the
detection rate to 6 per cent in these cases. The corresponding global detection
rate is only 3 per cent,” the official has been quoted.
The
truth is, the percentage was 44 (no less!), in 2016 in NADA testing, 11
positive cases out of 25 samples including nine out of 16 in ‘in-competition’
tests.
As
for other NADOs in 2017 IRMS testing for markers for steroid profiling,
Australia had five out of 71 samples (7%), France 10 out of 113 (9%), NADO
Flanders (Belgium) four out of 55 (13%), Iran seven of 54 (13%), Chile four of
40 (10%) and Ukraine four of 12 (33%), among others.
Indian
athletics churns out world-class results in the run-up to big championships every other year. Unless these are repeated or bettered or athletes come close to their best at
home in Olympics or World Championships, Indian athletics will continue to lose
credibility. NADA needs to contribute towards arresting this trend. “Quality
testing” is fine as long as it is directed towards “quality’ which cannot come
from departmental meets or under-19 tournaments. To begin with, NADA can devote
their energy towards athletes in its RTP (shockingly brought down from 64 to
25 in May this year). Test them about six to eight times a year out of
competition. Of course, most of them would be abroad when NADA starts looking
for them! Can’t NADA test them in countries like Poland, Finland and Bhutan?
Updated: 27 July, 2018
