The Organising Committee (OC), Commonwealth Games, is carrying out doping control responsibilities under the overall supervision of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) at the ongoing World Cup tournament.
A 12-member team headed by Dr. Munish Chander, Director, Doping Control, Commonwealth Games, is handling sample collection at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium. The urine samples will be tested at the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) here.
Dr. Peter Weffers Bettink of the Netherlands, Chairman of the FIH Medical Committee, is the overall in-charge of the doping control. Dr. Bettink, it is learnt, determines the players to be tested on a day-to-day basis. Players are chosen at random.
The CWG anti-doping set-up has taken up the World Cup as a test event to fine-tune its arrangements. Earlier it had carried out the doping control at the Commonwealth shooting championships also. It is scheduled to take over the responsibility during the Commonwealth boxing championships here from March 10.
Hockey does not have a history of doping. Two Spanish woman players were cleared of doping charges before the Beijing Olympic Games after a qualifying tournament in Azerbaijan in April 2008.
An Indian player had tested positive in tests conducted at the Delhi laboratory prior to the departure of the team for the Olympics qualifying tournament in Madrid in 2004. The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) did not pursue the case. The Dope Control Centre (DCC), as NDTL used to be called then, was a non-accredited facility at that time. Strictly going by the rules, no sanctions could have been imposed by the FIH then.
