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Narsingh Pancham Yadav found innocent by NADA disciplinary panel: Is he home free?

Narsingh Pancham Yadav can consider himself very, very fortunate.

Few expected National Anti-Doping Agency’s (NADA) disciplinary panel to be lenient with the grappler from Mumbai.

But NADA have been benevolent in ruling in favour of the 26-year-old wrestler exonerating him—giving him the benefit of the doubt— by accepting his version of sabotage by a fellow competitor.

Section 10.4 of NADA’s Anti-Doping Rules (2015) states:

10.4 Elimination of the Period of Ineligibility where there is No Fault or
Negligence
If an Athlete or other Person establishes in an individual case that he or she bears No Fault or Negligence, then the otherwise applicable period of Ineligibility shall be eliminated.
[Comment to Article 10.4: This Article and Article 10.5.2 apply only to the imposition of sanctions; they are not applicable to the determination of whether an anti-doping rule violation has occurred. They will only apply in exceptional circumstances, for example where an Athlete could prove that, despite all due care, he or she was sabotaged by a competitor.
Conversely, No Fault or Negligence would not apply in the following circumstances: (a) a positive test resulting from a mislabelled or contaminated vitamin or nutritional supplement
(Athletes are responsible for what they ingest (Article 2.1.1) and have been warned against the possibility of supplement contamination); (b) the Administration of a Prohibited Substance by the Athlete’s personal physician or trainer without disclosure to the Athlete
(Athletes are responsible for their choice of medical personnel and for advising medical personnel that they cannot be given any Prohibited Substance); and (c) sabotage of the Athlete’s food or drink by a spouse, coach or other Person within the Athlete’s circle of associates (Athletes are responsible for what they ingest and for the conduct of those Persons to whom they entrust access to their food and drink). However, depending on the unique facts of a particular case, any of the referenced illustrations could result in a reduced sanction under Article 10.5 based on No Significant Fault or Negligence.]

Had Yadav been found guilty, he would have been banned for the full period of four years.

Yadav and his fellow wrestlers celebrated by partaking of sweets outside the agency’s office.

But it’s not all clear for Rio as yet.

Chander Shekhar Luthra of DNA writes:

“…World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has so far refused to bow down to allegations of ‘sabotage’, keeping in mind that such a decision could well cause an irreparable loss to the ‘battle against doping’ at the international level.”

A retired Nada official said:

“What if the entire Russia stand together and say there was a deep conspiracy against their 100 athletes? What if Maria Sharapova now cites the ‘conspiracy’ angle by her opponents in her case that is being heard by Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS)?”

NADA’s rules state that appeals can be filed to both CAS and the National Anti-Doping Appeal Panel within a period of 21 days.

The latter’s unlikely—it would be tantamount to NADA challenging its own decision—but appeals can be made to CAS by WADA, the international Wrestling Federation United World Wrestling and the IOC; there exists no other apparent affected party in the above proceedings.

NADA lawyer Gaurang Kanth complained “he was not allowed to cross-examine Narsingh on the sabotage angle”.

Yadav had tested positive for the anabolic steroid — methandienone — in both his A and B samples.

NADA DG Naveen Agarwal read out the panel’s verdict:

“We kept in mind that in the past, till June 2, none of his samples were positive. It was inconceivable that one-time ingestion would be of benefit. Therefore the panel is of the view that the one-time ingestion was not intentional.”

Sushil Kumar, World champion (2010) and Beijing Olympics bronze medalist Indian wrestler, attending annual sports meet of GGSIPU, Delhi as a chief guest. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jitesh Kumar,the 17-year-old accused of spiking Yadav’s drinks is a trainee at Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium. Two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar supervises the wrestlers there. An FIR has already been filed by Yadav at the Rai police station in Haryana.

Related articles

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• WADA report shows tricks Russian athletes use to skip drug tests(newscientist.com)

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WADA considers blanket ban on rogue nations

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is fear-mongering.

Its president, Craig  Reedie, proclaimed that WADA is considering a blanket ban on countries that regularly violate doping guidelines. This should act as sufficient deterrent to prevent or reduce doping across all sports.

Reedie said:

“The fact that this is being discussed as a potential sanction is not entirely unhelpful. It’s a very, very serious sanction because it tends to be a pretty blunt instrument. Maybe that’s required. I’m not sure. It’s never been done before. I would want to wait until I see what my expert commission says about this.”

National bans—for varying reasons—have occurred before but it has always been restricted to individual disciplines.

Reedie’s deliberations come in the wake of  recent revelations of widespread  blood-doping in an investigation launched by Britain’s Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR.

But WADA itself is toothless and has no powers to impose such a stringent punishment. It can merely lobby and hope.

What this does imply is that WADA believes that doping in some rogue states is systematic and that national anti-doping agencies are in collusion with offenders letting them off  lightly.

Reedie admitted that WADA does not quite have the resources to tackle the global menace.

He said:

“People who wish to cheat have different and more opportunities to cheat than we have to resolve it in conventional ways.

If somebody produces a completely new substance that should be banned, it will take us some time to firstly identify it and then create a test (for it).

We don’t have enough money, but we’re realistic.

We’re now up to roughly $30 million a year as a budget. I think we have become pretty efficient at doing this much as we’ve been able to do within the restrictions that we have in budget terms. But yes, a little bit more help would be warmly welcomed.

If you look at our new (anti-doping) code, you will see there’s a much greater emphasis on investigations and intelligence gathering, and this involves a whole range of entities — law enforcement, customs and sports people.

You can pick up lots of information which allows you to then target a test, rather than blanket test lots of athletes.

Some of the major successes that the anti-doping movement has made have come from these non-analytical efforts.”

Reedie believes that efforts from athletes themselves where they come clean about their blood results may assist in alleviating suspicions that currently cloud sporting achievements.

We’d like to believe that sport is clean. We’d like to believe that there is no need to monitor athletes when we should be relying that honour and integrity are the code words they abide by.

Unfortunately, reality bites. The presence of agencies like WADA is a necessary tool to safeguard the sanctity of sport. Science and sports have intermingled so closely in recent times that separating what’s right and what’s not is no longer the domain of athletes, coaches and trainers. The more aware we are, the better we are able to respond. The general public, at large, merely perceives. And what it perceives is that ethics is being sacrificed at the altar of Mammon. “Everybody else does it, so why shouldn’t I?” can scarcely be the rallying cry of elite athletes.

And to assume that our heroes are saints is deceiving ourselves. It is also true that athletes are a reflection of their environment and while such a ban may be seem a little too extreme, it may be one solution. Such a ban, however, may benefit the countries that are at the leading edge of developments in science and R&D. They may be able to concoct substances that have not yet been listed as prohibited thus staying one step ahead of their pursuers. Is there not a danger of victimization of less fortunate nations?

There are no easy answers, just easy questions.

Asian cricket blues!

Image via Wikipedia

The inability or unwillingness of the BCCI to field an Indian cricket team for the Chinese Asian Games has been greeted with widespread consternation by the Indian public or so the media channels would have us believe. I , for one, am not of the view that India needs to field their best team for the Asian Games and thus the BCCI could have been somewhat more diplomatic and said yes to fielding a second string team like they have for the tri-series in Zimbabwe. Besides apart from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, no other teams of cricketing note will be there! And surely, the Indian cricket team cannot do worse than their performance at the World T20!

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