Quartermiler Nirmla Sheoran handed four-year ban for doping
NEW DELHI: Indian sprinter Nirmla Sheoran has been handed a four-year doping ban and been stripped of her 400m and 4x400m relay titles from the 2017 Asian Championships in Bhubaneswar. Sheoran, 24, is one of four Indian athletes whose urine samples returned a negative finding at the National Dope Testing Laboratory in New Delhi, but they were found to contain banned substances when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) got them re-tested in an accredited lab in Montreal in October last year.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), which manages track and field doping cases, announced in its website on Wednesday that Sheoran’s biological passport also indicated long-term doping.
The biological passport, as defined by WADA, helps “monitor selected biological variables over time that indirectly reveal the effects of doping rather than attempting to detect the doping substance or method itself.”
Her positive test means India will forfeit the relay gold in the Asian meet in Bhubaneswar. The ban has been backdated to June 29, 2018, when the first sample was collected. Her results from August 2016 to November 2018 were disqualified.
The AIU said Sheoran tested positive for the anabolic steroids drostanolone and metenolone, banned substances under the WADA’s 2018 prohibited list, in a urine sample taken at the Inter-State meet in Guwahati in June last year.
Her 400m personal best of 51.25 secs, clocked in Guwahati was faster than her fourth place finish (52.96 secs) at the Jakarta Asian Games. She can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sheoran has been prominent at national level since 2016. She qualified in 400m for the Rio Olympics and the 2017 World Athletics Championships.
In a three-page decision, AIU pointed out the discrepancies in her biological passport. Its expert panel concluded unanimously that it was highly likely a prohibited substance or method had been in use between August 7, 2013 and August 2, 2017.