WADA suspends India’s dope test lab
NEW DELHI: In a massive jolt to country’s anti doping programme, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Friday suspended India’s dope testing laboratory (NDTL) for six months for not conforming to the international norms of testing.
Eleven years ago India had got the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) approval for its own National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) and subsequently in 2008 the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) based here got the WADA accreditation.
The development comes as Indian athletes are preparing for the Tokyo Olympics — barely 300 days away —and has added to the headache of the sports ministry and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA).
A WADA letter dated August 22 stated, “The suspension has been imposed due to non-conformities with the International Standard for Laboratories (ISL) as identified during a WADA site visit, including in relation to the laboratory’s isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) analytical method, as regulated by the relevant technical document (TD2016IRMS).”
While all this may be technical jargon, in simple terms it means that henceforth all dope samples — already collected and yet to be collected — will have to sent abroad at one of the WADA-accredited laboratories for testing, which could leave the government poorer by lakhs of dollars.
The WADA statement further said, “In May 2019, disciplinary proceedings were initiated by WADA’s Laboratory Expert Group (LabEG) and subsequently carried out by an independent Disciplinary Committee, which was mandated to make a recommendation to the Chair of the WADA Executive Committee regarding the status of the laboratory’s accreditation. This process is now complete.”
The NDTL can appeal WADA’s decision in the Court of Arbitration for Sport within 21 days of receipt of notice and the ministry has said that they’ll take a call on the appeal shortly. “We’ll decide next week, but most probably we will appeal,” said sports secretary Radhey Shyam Julaniya on Friday.
The IOA president, Narinder Batra, said this was a huge setback ahead of the Olympic Games and added that the National Sports Federations (NSFs) will not be able to bear the cost of testing outside the country because they had no funds. “The suspension will hamper the Olympic Movement in India with the Tokyo Games 11 months away,” he said.
The ministry was at its wits’ end, claiming that “all corrective measures had been addressed when the WADA team had visited the lab last September and the suspension has come as a surprise”. “We had appealed to WADA to visit the lab again but there was no response,” said Julaniya.
The ministry had recently upped its fight against doping by introducing testing at state-level competitions and with cricket too coming under NADA’s ambit, there was a feeling that the government was really serious about rooting out the menace. But the suspension will throw a spanner in the works as sending the samples to a foreign country would cost them much more.
“The cost of testing is between $225 and 300 per sample abroad, while in India it was funded and regulated by the government. Also factor in the cost of transportation,” said Dr Ashok Ahuja, former head of the Sports Medicine Centre, Patiala. “NADA’s annual budget, including salaries to employees, is R10 crore, but now it will shoot up,” he said.
However, Julaniya said budget was not an issue. “We will ask labs in Asia to send us the invoice and then we’ll take a call. The lab with the lowest rates will be considered.”
NDTL officials on Friday were busy making a list of the samples to be transported to another WADA-accredited laboratory. “It will take us 2-3 days to compile the list. We have also communicated to our overseas clients not to send samples since the lab is suspended,” an NDTL official said on condition of anonymity.
The suspension could possibly be the offshoot of the NDTL not being able to handle some highprofile cases, including that of international javelin thrower Davinder Singh Kang, last year. The analysis of Kang’s out-ofcompetition urine sample, collected last year in February at Patiala, revealed glaring discrepancy in the A and B samples. The steroid level in ‘A’ sample was 19, while in the ‘B’ sample it was 14.2. Since Kang didn’t have a lawyer, WADA provided him legal advice through their lawyer, Mathew McDonagh, and the thrower’s suspension was revoked in April this year.
In November, 2018, WADA had targeted five top athletes, including 400m runner Nirmala Sheoran, middle-distance runner Jhuma Khatun, discus thrower Sandeep Kumari, shot putter Naveen Chikara and distance runner Sanjivani Jadhav. All except Jadhav had been tested in June by NADA during the 2018 Inter-State Championships in Guwahati and their urine samples, sent to NDTL, had come out negative. But when WADA re-tested them at its Montreal lab, all five athletes failed dope test for banned drugs.
Ahuja now feels that since more dope samples will be tested abroad, chances are “more positive cases will come out”. “Though all the labs have a standard benchmark referred to as ‘minimum required performance’, some labs have more sophisticated equipment while some don’t. But all follow WADA standard procedure for labs,” he added. The Delhi lab could detect steroid levels of around 2ng/ml, while the Montreal can detect much lower concentration of chemicals, which was why five Indian got caught in re-testing.
WHAT HAPPENS TO CRICKET?
There is speculation that since NDTL is suspended, the NADA’s planned tests on cricketers during the ongoing Duleep Trophy in Bengaluru could come a cropper. BCCI general manager, Saba Karim, said that, “Our association is with NADA, I’m sure they will come up with some arrangement.”
Dr Abhijit Salvi, BCCI’s antidoping manager, said, “The sample collection is done by NADA. NDTL does the testing; now they (NADA) will have to send it to one of the WADA-accredited labs overseas.”