Not on track

The day before sprinter Suresh Satya was to board a flight to Guangzhou, China, for the 2010 Asian Games, he was asked to take a drug test. In China, the bronze medal winner at the 2010 Commonwealth Games was informed that he had been suspended for two years as he had tested positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid that is classified as a Performance Enhancing Drug (PED). While Satya is now concentrating on the upcoming Asian Games, to be held later this year in South Korea, he isn't the only Indian athlete to have failed the dope test.

According to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), 49 Indian athletes are currently serving bans — ranging from six months to a lifetime — for consuming prohibited substances. In the last two years itself, more than 300 Indian athletes have failed drug tests.

History sheet

India’s first major doping embarrassment occurred during the 1990 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand. Weightlifter Subrata Kumar Paul, who’d already won two silvers and a bronze at the games, tested positive for anabolic steroids and was sent home immediately. Paul was also the first athlete in the history of CWG to be caught for doping. It has been a downward spiral ever since.

The relationship between doping and competitive sports, especially track and field events, is an old one. It is believed that the first instance of an athlete taking a drug to make him ‘superhuman’ was during the ancient games in Greece, where lizard meat was consumed in the hope of gaining an athletic advantage. In the modern era, the first documented case of doping was in 1906 when Thomas Hicks, running the Olympic marathon, was injected with strychnine (a pesticide commonly used to kill birds and rats) and some brandy, enabling him to edge his way to a gold in the event. It was only in 1967 though that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a ban on doping and it wasn’t until 1999 that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was formed.

In India, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) was formed only in 2009. Since its inception, more than 500 cases of doping have surfaced during and outside competition. The latest instance is that of Sachin Choudhary, the para-powerlifter who was sent home from the ongoing CWG because he failed a NADA test, which was taken a month before the contingent left for Glasgow.

Too high, too fast

“Everyone wants a shortcut to success. An easy fix,” says Dr PSM Chandran, the president of the Indian Federation of Sports Medicine, who retired last year as director, sports medicine, after 25 years at the Sports Authority of India (SAI). “Passing your zonals or regional meets has many advantages. You stand to get employment in services like the railways or the police, you could win awards, get prize money; so athletes, especially in the lower rungs, are all too willing to take drugs and supplements to help them get ahead.”

The promise of quick gains, prevalence of banned supplements and ignorance about what is allowed are among the reasons why numerous athletes are caught in the doping net. While organisations like NADA take care of the testing, in terms of precaution and prevention there is little effort from administrative and other supporting athletics organisations and federations.

“In any athletic meet in our country, there is hardly any publicity material that warns athletes about substances that are banned. In many cases, athletes discover that a supplement they have taken is banned only after the test results come out,” says Dr Chandran. The IAAF shares the doctor’s opinion on this matter. “Many athletes are simply not aware of anti-doping practices rather than being involved in any form of systematic cheating,” says Chris Turner, deputy director, PR, IAAF communications department, via email. “We are in touch with relevant parties and want to spread accurate information, but in a vast country with an equally vast population, this is a complex problem to resolve.”

Many of the drugs and supplements that are banned by WADA are available over the counter in India. “You just need to go to any pharmacy and drugs like stanozolol can be bought for as little as ₹40 and pharmacists seldom ask for a prescription,” says Arun Mendiratta, chief medical officer, Athletics Federation of India. “Many of these steroids are meant for therapeutic purposes, and when athletes take them they risk being banned from competitive sports. These can have disastrous side-effects as well,” Mendiratta says.

But with little proactive efforts to prevent doping — apart from the odd lecture during athletic meets — the situation is likely to worsen before it improves. As GS Randhawa, veteran athlete and gold medallist at the ’62 Asian Games, says, “It is the anxiety for a good performance that results in doping. The solution is simple for an athlete, just train systematically and stick to your routine and diet.”

But the problem in India is often one of ignorance rather than malpractice. As Satya says, “My dad is a retired police officer and because of athletics I have a job with a bank. Like me, many athletes come from a poor background, and we might take a medicine for a fever or something, which unknowingly backfires, like it did for me,” adding, “If they would only tell us more clearly what’s allowed and what’s not from a young age, half the battle would be won right there.”