Sport - Sports : General

Three athletes test positive

NEW DELHI: Three Services athletes including Asian championship bronze medal-winning triple jumper Bibu Mathew had tested positive for prohibited substances in tests conducted at the inter-Services athletics championships held in Hyderabad last August.

The other two were shot putter Jaiveer Singh and hammer thrower Mukesh Kumar.

All three athletes have been placed under provisional suspension and the Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) is going through procedures to confirm their suspensions. If the charges are proved the three athletes face two-year bans. None of the three had sought ‘B’ sample tests, according to sources.

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) is expected to endorse the suspensions of these athletes once the hearing procedures are completed.

Mathew, a Navy athlete, who took the bronze in the last Asian championships in Amman in 2007, with a wind-aided 16.64m — he had a personal best of 16.59 in the same meet — won the Services title last August. He claimed the silver (15.86m) in the Open National in Kochi in September before finishing sixth in the Asian All-Stars meet in Bhopal with a jump of 15.68.

Probably, the AFI was not informed about the ‘positives’ in August or the tests were done much later. Otherwise a situation of an ‘offender’ being allowed to compete in a National and international event would not have arisen. (It was not known when the test results were reported by the National Dope Testing Laboratory).

Mathew’s was not the sole case of an athlete charged with a doping offence managing to compete in a couple of subsequent events. Shot putter Jaiveer Singh, who had represented the country in the 2002 and 2003 Asian championships, apart from several other international meets, had finished fourth in the Kochi National (16.86) and fifth in the Asian All-Stars meet (16.94).

The Armyman has a personal best of 18.78, achieved in the year 2000.

Mathew tested positive for mephentermine, a cardiac stimulant that can be administered intramuscularly or intravenously, while Jaiveer’s urine sample showed steroid stanozolol.

Mukesh Kumar, a lesser known Army athlete, who took the third place in hammer in the Services championship, tested positive for steroid nandrolone. The SSCB is also looking into the case of another hammer thrower who had reportedly committed an anti-doping rule violation during the Services championship, though it is not related to a ‘positive’ test.

Another top triple jumper of the country is learnt to have tested positive for ephedrine at the Kochi National. The case is being pursued by the AFI. Since ephedrine is a ‘specified substance’ he may get off lightly, even with a mere warning for a first violation, though he would be disqualified from the event.

In order to attract a lighter punishment the athlete, however, will have to convince the hearing panel that the use of the substance was not intended to enhance performance. A second such violation will result in a ban of two years.

‘Specified substances’ are those that are “particularly susceptible to unintentional anti-doping rule violations because of their general availability in medicinal products or which are less likely to be successfully abused as doping agents.” The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has a list of ‘specified substances’ that is updated every year.

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