What NADA testing figures reveal (part II)

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)