NADA harps on 'quality testing' (Part II)

(Part I is here)

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.

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?

 (Concluded)

Updated: 27 July, 2018