CHENNAI: In the wake of strict quota-reduction penalties introduced by the Commonwealth Games Federation for 2022 Birmingham, the Indian Weightlifting Federation (IWLF) has asked its affiliated members to submit the whereabouts of their respective lifters by January 11. Only those lifters, who submit their whereabouts in the said time frame, will be allowed to participate in the qualifying events for the 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG).
"We have started receiving whereabouts. Once we receive them, the database will be handed over to the National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) which will help them to track these athletes and conduct tests. This is being done to ensure the lifters stay away from doping," Sahdev Yadav, IWLF secretary-general, told this daily.
As per the quota-reduction penalties, which have been introduced for the first time in the CWG, every doping violation during the qualifying period will be punished by the loss of one place. The maximum team size is 16, which is split equally between men and women. The new system also says nations could be barred outright if they have more than three violations during a year. The ranking period for qualification for the CWG began on January 1 and will continue until February 14, 2022.
India won nine medals including five gold in Gold Coast in 2018. However, the worrying part is that India along with Malaysia has the worst doping record among Commonwealth countries.
As many as 31 state associations apart from Services Sports Control Board, Railway Sports Promotion Board, FCI Sports Promotion Board, and All India Police Sports Control Board are affiliated units of the IWLF. All these members have been asked to send the whereabouts of their respective lifters.
"By creating a database and sharing with NADA, all the lifters can be tracked anytime. At the moment, there are only a few select lifters who are being monitored by either NADA or its parent body World Anti-doping Agency (WADA). But once this exercise is over, all the weightlifters can be monitored," said a
source, who is tracking the developments.
According to the official IWLF website, a total of 1345 senior and 2042 youth and junior weightlifters are registered with the federation to date. Among them, only seven are in the registered testing pool of NADA while elite lifters are Mirabai Chanu and Jeremy Lalrinnunga are in WADA's testing pool.
"Once these lifters enter the system, they will be required to update their details including whereabouts on a regular basis thus ensuring constant monitoring. This will act as a deterrent and decrease the risk of them taking banned substances," added the source.