JODHPUR: It has been nearly a month since the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) had its accreditation taken away by the World Anti-Doping Agency and Indian sport is slowly waking up to the consequences.With the Tokyo Olympics less than 12 months away, the upcoming stretch of events and camps would have seen increased testing at the various meets and national camps.
The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) had even firmed up plans to increase the scope of testing and include the various state championships within their testing programme. Over the last couple of months, they had visited state athletics championships in Kerala, Maharashtra, Haryana and Telangana. It was also reported there were plans to test every athlete who stood a chance of qualifying for Tokyo at least four times, in a bid to ensure that India is not embarrassed on the grandest stage.But the ban on NDTL means that NADA — which is an autonomous organisation with different management than that governing the banned laboratory — will have to get samples tested at WADA-accredited labs outside India. The costs of doing so mean that their plans to increase testing is no longer financially feasible.
“We had originally planned to upgrade testing but those plans have been put on hold,” NADA director general Navin Agarwal told this newspaper. “We are still carrying out testing according to our original plans — there is no reduction in numbers.” He revealed the cost of getting samples tested had almost doubled since the NDTL was banned.
The numbers given by the organisation for the month of August make for interesting reading. In July, they had collected 528 samples, presumably the effect of a push for increased testing. They had collected samples from 15 meets and camps in multiple disciplines including wushu, judo, shooting, taekwondo and motorsports. In August, this number had shrunk to 371.
Curiously, since the ban on NDTL was announced on August 23, NADA officials turned up at just the one event — the Inter-State Athletics Meet in Lucknow.The first 20 days of August saw samples collected from 13 events. The last 10 days saw them go to just one.
In the 12-month period between April 2018 and March 2019, NADA collected 4348 samples. This was significantly higher than the 3594 tests it carried out during the calendar year of 2017. The plan was for those numbers to skyrocket even further, but the NDTL ban may have put a spanner in the works.