Six Indian female runners will serve two-year bans after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld an appeal by the International Association of Athletics Federations against lighter sentences, according to the athletes’ counsel.
“All six athletes have been banned for two years each starting from the dates of their provisional suspension in June-July last year,” attorney R.K. Anand told AP on the phone from Switzerland on Wednesday. “The decision has been intimated to us and we are contemplating our further course of action.”
The athletes had been handed lighter one-year bans by National Anti-Doping Agency, which felt the athletes had taken performance-enhancing drugs unknowingly, prompting the IAAF appeal.
The athletes include three members of the 4x400 relay team that won the gold medal in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games and Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 - Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose. The other three runners were Jauna Murmu, Tiana Mary and Priyanka Panwar.
Akkunji, Jose and Panwar tested positive for methandienone, Murmu and Mary for epimethandiol, and Kaur for the more common stanozolol.
Their coach, Yuri Ogorodnik of Ukraine, was fired in July last year after being accused of providing the athletes with food supplements not sanctioned by the Sports Authority of India.
Raman has made some valuable points, including suggesting tongue-in-
cheek that many if not all foreign superstars are on drugs, which may
be true. There is a thin line between sports medicine and a
performance-enhancer. How about giving a try to the views of a former
French expert who in the wake of the Ben Johnson fiasco in 1988 had
suggested the removal of restrictions - for everyone takes drugs
anyway, and no amount of drug-taking can turn a donkey into a race
horse ( I personally feel that Johnson was unfairly done in, and he
could well have done the 100m in 9.79 even without drugs).But the
dangers of people dying from drug-overuse and females acquiring male
characteristics with the attendant miseries cannot be ruled out. I am
not saying let cheats prosper, however ... A real grey area, if ever
there was one.
About these six, there are some brilliant athletes among them,
especially Akunji who was still to peak. I wish they leave this trauma
behind, and come back clean.
A cautionary tale for Indian athletes. Of late many in competitive sports are taking performance enhancing drugs. The sad truth is neither the athlete nor the doctor/coach training these people have any idea of chemistry related to the drugs and the way they are processed as metabolites that are later detected in tests by high resolution mass spectrum. The drugs they take routinely are of the older genre whose profile have been solidly established in the international arena (Commonwealth, Olympic games etc.)that many have been caught. India is lagging behind big time in sports medicine, that athletes from India are routinely caught like a deer on the headlights and then come across as being stupid to the rest of the World. Whereas, athletes abroad are taking drugs whose profile is not well established (not yet!) and they can evade detection. It is a cat and a mouse game at all times except that Indian athletes come across as a sitting duck, because of their ignorance. Watch out!
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