The arrival of athletics coach Yuriy Ogorodnik, though much-awaited, is a mystery. The government had approved his appointment after the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) stamped their acceptance. But the coach is yet to take over.
“The approval was sanctioned six months ago,” said Union Sports Secretary Ajit Sharan on Friday. “It is for the AFI to take a call.”
The SAI had initially slowed down the clearance but finally approved his name because the athletes found it “comfortable” to work with the Ukrainian coach.
AFI president Adille Sumariwalla said on Friday, “I expect Yuriy to arrive in a couple of weeks. The delay is because of paper work involved with various government agencies. Not much should be read into his delayed arrival.”
Though Ogorodnik was sacked by the then Union Sports Minister Ajay Maken following the doping scandal involving six women’s 400m runners, the AFI and the SAI have maintained in recent weeks that nothing incriminating against him was reported by any of the panels.
Two of the athletes tested positive for steroids methanienone and stanozolol, four others for methandienone. Both the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee that went into the doping incident and the hearing panels came to the conclusion that contaminated Ginseng bought by Ogorodnik in China had led to the ‘positive’ tests.
Five of the athletes who underwent two-year suspensions following the doping episode — Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur, Priyanka Panwar, Sini Jose and Jauna Murmu — are now back in the Sports Ministry’s TOP Scheme for Rio Olympics. So too Ogorodnik!
The aim is to get a medal in the women’s 4x400m relay in Rio. Much against recent claims, the Mudgal committee did not exactly exonerate Ogorodnik. On the contrary there are enough observations in the report to keep him away from the Indian team.
A look at Justice Mudgal’s preliminary report shows that documents supplied to the panel by the National Institute of Sports (NIS) Executive Director L.S. Ranawat, as recovered from the coach’s room, referred to ‘testosterone’ and a mysterious ‘white tablet’.
The document that carried the mention of ‘white tablet’ had the words “2002 Asiad Busan inscribed in the upper right corner,” said the Mudgal report.
Ogorodnik, who owned up to one of the documents that contained food supplements, denied that he was the author of the one containing ‘testosterone’ when confronted by the Mudgal committee. He told the panel that he had no recollection of the third one (with Busan written on it) and said it might have been an old supplements programme.
Ogorodnik was not asked to stay back and face the disciplinary panel that heard the athletes. He had left the country by the time the proceedings started at NADA though the Mudgal panel had opined that it would be up to the NADA panel to determine his culpability.
No effort was made to verify the hand-writing in the documents recovered from the coach’s room. The ministry refuted suggestions on Friday that there was a rethink on Ogorodnik’s appointment.
If the athletes were eventually suspended for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the argument of their negligence, the same negligence on the part of the coach has also been brought out by the Mudgal committee.
“The coach has been negligent,” said Mudgal in his report, “in purchasing the supplements, i.e. Ginseng Kianpi in China, as he did not verify whether the content in the supplements had banned substances.”
He “failed to verify the authenticity of the shop selling the supplements; and failed to consult with the SAI doctors and/or nutritionists/dietician and/or medical commission of the AFI before buying the supplements”.
