CHENNAI: IT is starting to be bit more frequent. Weeks after Sneha K had to be omitted from the Asian Athletics Championships team, middle distance runner Twinkle Chaudhary tested positive. According to the World Athletics anti-doping watchdog Athletics Integrity Unit(AIU), Twinkle tested positive for anabolic and androgenic steroid (AAS) Methyltestosterone. She was part of the team that travelled to Gumi in May and is understood to have been tested there.
This is another case of high-profile athletes, a national and international medallist testing positive after javelin thrower Shivpal Singh and quarter-miler Sneha this year.
Twinkle has been provisionally suspended. Interestingly, she competed in Taiwan and won silver and at the Asian meet she finished fourth. The event in Taiwan came after the meet in Gumi. At April's senior national federation athletics competition in Kochi, Twinkle represented Reliance and won the 800m with a timing of 2:00.71 (new meet record). It needs to be seen if the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) had tested her. She has been provisionally suspended under World Anti-Doping Agency's anti-doping rule. She faces a maximum of four year ban for first offence.
Interestingly, the substance is the same substance that up and coming javelin thrower DP Manu tested positive for. Not just Shivpal and Sneha, even long distance runner Kartik Kumar, silver medal winner at the 2023 Asian Games, tested positive during a test conducted by the United State Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). The NADA has been collecting samples from top athletes not just in India but abroad as well.
This has once against brought the focus back on Athletics Federation of India's (AFI) decentralisation policy and the difficulty of monitoring. This had been an issue that the AFI was expected to face when they announced this policy. Though the AFI felt that because of their monitoring, doping issue has been tackled, but this case would put a question mark.
Adille Sumariwalla, the AFI spokesperson said on Friday: “AFI has no needle policy and zero tolerance to doping. But accountability of the officials/coaches at the district/state level whose athletes test positive for performance enhancing drugs should be fixed. Strict punishment will act as a deterrent.”
The AFI had already announced that coaches of athletes who test positive will also face sanctions but for Sneha who was part of the the national camp and was training at National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Thiruvananthapuram, no coach has been penalised as yet. She was training with both domestic and foreign coaches where the 4x400m relays teams are training.
Athletics has been one of the most tainted sports when it comes to doping. A recent WADA testing report also indicated that among the 214 positive dope cases athletics topped the charts. The testing authority NADA had tested 1223 urine and blood samples out of which 60 were positive -- the highest among sporting disciplines in the country. Recently, according to a sports ministry's annual report, 43 athletes had tested positive — the highest number — between April 2023 and January 2024. The overall total number stood at 125 positives from 4891 samples
