There is a familiarity about the developments that have taken place in the anti-doping front in the country the past few days.
It reminds you of the time Sunita Rani tested positive at the Busan Asian Games in 2002 or of the time Neelam Jaswant Singh tested positive at the World athletics championships in Helsinki in 2005. Or of weightlifters testing positive at the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games and the 2004 Olympic Games.
Over a period of time, things became quiet and life was back to normal in Indian sport. The tough talk died down as quickly as it had begun. Just a slogan remained: ‘Zero tolerance'.
Is this latest storm also a passing one?
The outrage this time is more than in the past since a nation that rejoiced along with nearly 50,000 spectators at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on the concluding day of the Commonwealth Games athletics action when the women's 4x400m relay team struck gold, is surely feeling let down.
Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose, two of the five ‘caught' by testers this time were in that gold-medal winning squad that went onto win the Asian Games title also a month later. Jauna Murmu, another girl in the dope net was part of the team in the preliminary round in CWG.
Tiana Mary, another 400m runner, was to have made it along with the rest for the Asian championships in Kobe. Now, a 4x400m team is unlikely to be fielded there.
Theories floated
Theories are being floated; excuses are being brought up to explain how prohibited substances could have entered the systems of the athletes.
The ‘supplements theory' that invariably comes into play in all such cases has been put forward vigorously by the athletes as well as the officials. It is to be determined who supplied the nutritional supplements to the athletes.
The initial response suggested something from “outside the NIS”; now there are versions that indicate otherwise. The AFI had thrown its weight around the athletes as well as the coaches.
If supplements are tested and stanozolol and methanidenone turn up in them, can the athletes be exonerated?
Even when the athlete proves how the substance entered his/her body, there cannot be complete exoneration on the argument of mislabelled or contaminated supplements, according to the WADA Code.
But a reduction in sanction (half of normal) is possible under the “no significant fault or negligent” rule.
The athlete will have to establish that “the cause of the positive test was contamination in a common multiple vitamin purchased from a source with no connection to prohibited substances and the athlete exercised care in not taking other nutritional supplements.”
The AFI panel that is to hear Mandeep and Murmu, contrary to earlier indications, could be one specially formed for the purpose. There could be a five-member panel including members from the AFI.
The shock expressed by the authorities these past few days should come as a surprise to those who believed doping was rampant in Indian athletics.
Tell-tale signs
If the tell-tale signs left by juniors and seniors at stadia during National meets or the ‘positive' cases being reported were not sufficient to prove the extent of the ‘disease' then enquiries within the camp could have made the Government wiser.
The publication of the contents of two doping charts, prepared probably by an expert from among the foreign coaches and ‘recovery experts', in these columns in June, 2004, should have opened up the eyes of the authorities.
Now, at least one more chart has surfaced.
These charts give a concoction of steroids that had been prescribed for the athletes. There must be something wrong with a system that allows such charts and chart-makers to flourish even after seven years.
The most telling, but shameful commentary about the Indian doping scene came, back in 2006 when a large batch of Indian athletes bolted from Potchefstroom, South Africa, when a WADA-authorised team took it by surprise.
“They ran off down the street,” the chairman of Athletics South Africa's Anti-doping Commission, Chris Hattingh told The Times , Johannesburg, about the Indian athletes fleeing when a team from the SA Institute of Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS) came calling.
“One even left his shoes behind,” Mr. Hattingh was quoted as saying.
The WADA and the IAAF kept pursuing Indian athletes that year as well as the next, without being successful in getting a ‘positive'. The script changed dramatically on May 25 at Patiala.
