The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) is yet to press for an extended sanction for first-time doping offenders under the ‘aggravating circumstances' rule.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), faced with the increasing demand for tougher sanctions against dope cheats, had brought in the ‘aggravating circumstances' rule in its revised Code in 2009.
The rule, under Article 10.6, allows for a maximum four-year sanction for first-time offenders if there are aggravating circumstances instead of the standard two for normal cases.
The ‘aggravating circumstances' include any instance of an athlete being part of a ‘doping scheme' and of using multiple prohibited substances or a prohibited substance on multiple occasions.
Statistics about athletes having been penalised world-wide across all sports under this rule are not available.
But UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) has enforced this clause in at least two cases including that of sprinter Bernice Wilson last January.
Wilson tested positive for testosterone and clenbuterol, both anabolic agents, in a meet in June, 2011.
She was given a four-year suspension.
On appeal by the athlete, the sanction was not only upheld but the panel also ruled that she was guilty of trying to shift the blame on others. She was asked to pay the costs of appeal to the UKAD.
In June, 2011, the UKAD had also imposed a four-year sanction on 37-year-old shot putter Mark Edwards who had tested positive for steroids testosterone and clostebol.
Also in June, 2011, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) suspended hammer thrower Mathew DiBuono for four years for testing positive for multiple steroids multiple times.
Back in November, 2010, the WADA Director-General, David Howman, had admitted that anti-doping organisations were reluctant to impose four-year sanctions using Article 10.6.
Not tough enough
“When it comes to the crunch, obviously people are not willing to be as tough as they sound,” Howman was quoted in an AP interview.
In India, since January 2009 till this month, there have been 42 cases of multiple-steroid violations in 260 adjudicated cases where offenders have received a maximum of two-year sanctions.
The majority of the cases have come from powerlifting (14) and bodybuilding (12), with weightlifting and kabaddi contributing five each, athletics four and swimming and canoeing and kayaking one each.
S.K. Tiwari, a bodybuilder who was slapped with a two-year suspension in August, 2010, tops the list of sportspersons caught with a concoction of steroids, with four, stanozolol, methandienone, clenbuterol and nandrolone.
Next comes the instance of two bodybuilders (N. Premchand and Sunil Kumar) and two kabaddi players (Surjeet Singh Khangra and Gurbir Singh) with three steroids each.
Stanozolol tops the list of favourite drugs with 35 using the steroid.
Methandienone with 21 and nandrolone with 18 come next best.
A majority of the athletes also had some stimulant like mephentermine or a diuretic like furosemide in their urine samples.
The Code revision process has started again.
And expectedly, there is a demand for increasing the standard sanction from two to four years from several quarters including Britain.
The stakeholders would also do well to look into the practice of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) having a standard four-year ban for first-time offenders and six years for “aggravating circumstances”.
Defying logic
An impression has been created that the IWF had brought in this four-year suspension following the last revision of the Code to account for aggravating cases.
If that was true then the six years prescribed for aggravating cases in the same set of rules may defy logic.
In any case, the IWF change came in 2008 while the revised Code became effective in January, 2009. In India the changes took shape only in January 2010.
What is of significance is a weightlifter who tests positive for a steroid in a test conducted by the IWF or in an international competition will get a four-year suspension while if he were to be caught in a domestic test in India he will get only a two-year suspension for the same offence.
This defeats the very idea of ‘harmonisation' of sanctions.
