The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : Disciplinary panel to meet today

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Monday, Feb 27, 2006

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Sport - Athletics

Disciplinary panel to meet today

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Disciplinary Committee, headed by Mr. Sushil Salwan, one of the associate vice presidents of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) will meet here on Monday to hear the case of the "missing athletes".

That the committee will be meeting just a day before the Federation Cup, the final trials for the aspirants for the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, gives the proceedings added importance since the composition of the Indian team will hinge on the verdict by the committee.

The committee, which also includes Dr. Kripal Singh, former Technical Committee chairman, and Mr. Sunny Joshua, AFI Joint Secretary, will have the task of going through the explanations of the 17 athletes who are under suspension. The athletes had either not reported for the camp at the NIS,

Patiala, as scheduled after return from South Africa or continued to abstain from the camp in the wake of the visit by a WADA testing team in the first week of this month.

It is not known whether any of the suspended athletes had reported prior to the WADA visit and then "disappeared" when testers came looking for them, never to return to the camp. Of course, at a later stage they were suspended ruling them out for the two National circuit meets that were held in Delhi and Patiala.

The AFI Secretary, Lalit Bhanot, said on Saturday that the federation had received "explanations from almost all athletes".

Most of the athletes are expected to cite illness or other pressing commitments within the family if not injury as the reason for their absence.

It is to be seen whether the panel would complete the hearing in one sitting on Monday in order to enable the athletes, who could be reprieved, to compete in the Federation Cup from Tuesday.

Contrary to earlier perception, when it was known that around a dozen athletes had been suspended, there are 17 in the batch and that includes the entire gold-winning women's 4x400m relay team from the Incheon Asian championships. The women's relay team was considered a certainty for Melbourne till now.

The suspended athletes:

Men: Anil Kumar and Vishal Saxena (100m), Sreejith P. S., Bhupinder Singh, Satbir Singh and P. Shankar (400m), Maha Singh (long jump), Malkiat Singh (triple jump), Navpreet Singh and Ranvijay Singh (shot put) and Jagdish Bishnoi (javelin).

Women: Manjeet Kaur, Chitra K. Soman, Rajwinder Kaur and Satti Geetha (400m), Seema Antil (discus) and J. J. Shobha (long jump and heptathlon).

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