The Hindu : Sport : IOA advises two-year bans

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

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IOA advises two-year bans

Special Correspondent

If Pratima's appeal comes up only next November, she would have completed more than one year of her two-year suspension!

NEW DELHI: The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has written to the Indian Weightlifting Federation advising it to lift the life-bans imposed on three woman weightlifters and the chief coach following the Athens Olympics.

In its recent letter, the IOA has suggested that it would be better to impose two-year suspensions on the three — Sanamacha Chanu, Pratima Kumari and Sunaina Anand — than stick to the life-bans in view of the position adopted by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) as well as the rules of WADA and the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF).

As per the WADA Code, first-time doping violations attract two-year bans (except in the case of certain specified substances) while life-bans are imposed for a second infraction. Chanu tested positive for diuretic furosemide at the Olympics while Pratima was found positive for steroid testosterone in an out-of-competition test just before the Athens Games.

Sunaina tested positive for steroid nandrolone at the Asian championships in Almaty in April, 2004.

Shortly after the IOA announced life-bans on the lifters and coach Pal Singh Sandhu, in September last year, WADA had written to it to state that while it appreciated the tough stance adopted by the Indian NOC, the life-ban was not in compliance with the Code.

Taking the logical route

Caught in an embarrassing situation, the IOA has now opted for the logical way out by initiating the process to lift the life-bans and follow the international federation's two-year bans to operate. The same criteria will be applied to Sandhu too, IOA sources revealed on Tuesday.

All the three lifters are already undergoing their suspensions. In Pratima's case, the lifter had made an appeal to the IWF to consider her case before an appeals panel. Her case was expected to come up during the Junior World championships in Busan, Korea, between May 15 and 20, but there has been a change in schedule. Now, the case is likely to come up in Doha, during the World championships in November.

If Pratima's appeal comes up only by next November, she would have completed more than one year of her two-year suspension by then! And she would be arguing that she could not be held responsible for testosterone getting into her body since, without her knowledge, she was injected with an assortment of medicines during the Indian team's training in Minsk, Belarus, prior to the Olympics with the knowledge of the two coaches — Sandhu and Leonid Taranenko of Belarus.

The federation is also planning to take up at its next Executive Committee meeting the old doping violations, alleged to have been committed by Chanu and Pratima in 1994 and 1996 respectively.

Pratima has challenged the claim that she ever returned a positive before Athens. According to her, the positive for nandrolone, reported by the Dope Control Centre here in 1996, was never established since the authorities could not accede to her request for a `B' sample test.

It was not immediately known why the Indian federation was trying to rake up old cases. For one thing, both 1994 and 1996 would be time-barred under WADA's `statute of limitations.'

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