The Hindu : Sport : Anil’s positive test kept under wraps

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 18, 2007
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Sport - Sports : General

Anil’s positive test kept under wraps

K. P. Mohan

NEW DELHI: Discus thrower Anil Kumar had turned in a positive dope test at the Asian championships in Incheon, South Korea, but it took the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) almost two years to give a verdict of “guilty.”

The doping case, kept under wraps by the AFI and the Asian Athletics Association (AAA) for two years, was resolved only “recently” when an AFI panel ruled that Anil was guilty of a doping violation.

The decision has been conveyed to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which has included his case in the list of violations for 2005.

Anil was under provisional suspension during the period his case dragged on, but his two-year suspension, eventually imposed by the AFI, ostensibly under pressure from the IAAF, ended on September 15, just two days ago.

His suspension period started from September 16, 2005 while his results from September 1, 2005 have been annulled. Needless to say, he will be stripped of his bronze medal too.

Norandrosterone

Anil’s urine sample that produced the adverse result was collected at the Asian championships in Incheon where he claimed the bronze (59.95m). Norandrosterone, a metabolite of nandrolone, was detected in his sample.

The case apparently became contentious after Anil claimed that the sample collection procedure at Incheon was faulty following two of his samples returning specific gravity below the required limit. He is learnt to have claimed that a third sample that should have been collected was never taken.

The rather prolonged delay in procedures, involving the AAA and the AFI, has not been explained so far.

AFI Secretary Lalit Bhanot, speaking from Bhopal, said that initially the AAA had formed a committee to go into the athlete’s contentions, leading to the delay.

Anil is the second high-profile Indian athlete to have been sanctioned in recent times. Woman discus thrower Neelam J. Singh, who was charged with a doping violation at the Helsinki World championships, had her appeal turned down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last July.

She ended her two-year suspension on August 15 but is yet to come back to competition pending completion of her re-instatement testing.

Anil, Asian Games silver medallist in 1998 and bronze medal winner in 2002, had held the national record in discus for several years before the U.S.-based Vikas Gowda came on the scene in a big way in 2004.

The Haryana athlete, who had spent much of the past five years in Szombathely, Hungary, had also won the Asian championships gold in 2000. He was conferred with the Arjuna Award for the year 2004.

For more than a year now he has been complaining of some injury or the other having hampered him.

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