‘Dope robs athletes of level-playing field’
NEWDELHI:Ahead of the 2019 track and field season, PT Usha called upon all stakeholders to ensure a fair platform for athletes who are clean of doping. The coming season assumes significance as it features the 2020 Tokyo Olympic qualification events, including the IAAF World Relays in May in Yokahama, Japan.
With a spate of recent doping cases, the latest involving 400m runner Nirmala Sheoran, Usha said, if big names are getting caught in retesting of samples by World Anti Doping Agency, there is something wrong and it needs to be addressed. “I doubt if any agency is probing hard enough to get to the bottom of the issue and find out how athletes are able to come out clean during domestic anti-doping tests and test positive when the same samples are retested in a foreign lab,” Usha said during a media interaction on the sidelines of the All India Police Athletics Championships.
Nirmala was among five top athletes whose urine sample was retested in Germany and all five have tested positive for banned substances. Since 2016 Nirmala, from Haryana, was at the forefront, winning almost all major 400m races on the domestic circuit and subsequently qualified for the Rio Olympics and the 2017 World Championships.
Her winning streak, however, came to an end when she was upstaged by 18-year-old Hima Das at the Inter-State Championships in Guwahati in June.
Nirmala’s personal best of 51.25 secs in 400m, clocked in Guwhati was a lot faster than her fourth-place finish (52.96 secs) at the Jakarta Asian Games.
Usha also raised questions on Nirmala’s gold-medal winning performance at the 2017 Asian Championships in Bhubaneswar. “I doubt whether it was clean performance,” Usha said.
Jakarta Asian Games silver medallist in sprints (100m/200m) Dutee Chand pointed to lack of awareness as a main reason for doping.