BOMBAY, 31 August 2004 — All predictions, of officials and critics alike, have gone haywire. It was being suggested that the edition at Athens would be the country’s best ever. No one knows on what this optimism was based, but in reality, it has so far turned out to be the worst, for reasons far beyond the performances.
The lone silver medal in the double-trap shooting event failed to lift the gloom that descended on the Indian contingent. The dismal failures in the various disciplines apart, India squad brought great disgrace on itself by getting involved in all sorts of controversies. Two women weightlifters, who were considered medal hopes were disqualified for doping. The third. A bronze medal winner at Sydney, just touched the weights and did not lift the bar even an inch from the ground and just walked away.
The Indian hockey team, with the glorious past of having won the Olympic gold eight times, flopped as no team before it had ever done. It had lost match after match and their general displays raised doubts over the move to appoint a German coach, in place of the original Indian coach, just a few days before the Olympics.
Coming to the doping controversy, it is not the first time that Indian participants were found positive for use of banned substances in the form of anabolic steroid. Two female lifters were suspended on the same evening and a third withdrew on her own, feigning injury. The president of the International Weightlifting Federation Tomas Ajan had warned the Indian Olympic Association president, Suresh Kalmadi “Watch your weightlifters. They are making frequent trips to Belarus and Ukraine.” The warning was hardly heeded. And now, the IOA has ordered two separate commissions of inquiry. As had happened before, all will be forgotten in four years and the drama will be re-enacted at the next Olympics.
Contrary to a popular perception, doping in Indian sport is not a latter-day occurrence. The first reported case of a visible doping incident was far back as 1968, during the selection trials of the Mexico Olympics. The national 5,000 and 10,000 meters record holder Kirpal Singh ran up the steep steps of the Railway Stadium in New Delhi in jubilation of his having broken the Asian records during the trials. He began frothing at the mouth and virtually collapsed. Luckily his wife who is a doctor and was present at the Stadium, rushed him to hospital and gave him a stomach wash. It wasn’t until the next five years when he was in a position to run healthily again. But by then, it was too late for him to enter any competition.
Kirpal was lucky but not so was Jarnail Singh. He collapsed after a trial race and never recovered. More recently, discus national champion, Ajit Bahadur lost his life, following a heart attack at the age of 23.
Things haven’t changed much. Sunita Kumari was found positive on a drug test at the Sydney Olympics. She managed to get her suspension lifted on an appeal. Instead of “A” sample the “B” sample was sent for the first test. It was on this technicality that she escaped.
The weightlifters continue to flirt with drug abuse, some rather naively, some knowingly. There have been a total of half-a-dozen cases since 1990, especially with regard to the weightlifters, but the coach, who cannot be ignorant of the use of performance-enhancing drugs, has remained in his post for almost 15 years. Even though Pratima Kumari, who is one of those disqualified, has stated that she was forced to take these drugs during training in Belarus, the two coaches, one Indian and the other Russian, have not been questioned as to their role in this scandal. The Sports Ministry officials, along with those of the IOA, have attended several important international meetings on this burning issue of the day, doping, They have, however, done little to keep the athletes and lifters from going stray.
Athens is the first Olympic Games to have a blanket dope tests for all the participants, some 10,000 of them, before the start of the Games. And yet there have been so many cases. Two sprinters from the host country, Greece, did not even take the test and were not allowed to participate.
While the international bodies concerned are spending millions of dollars on the detection of drug abuse, it is learnt, several advanced countries spend three to four times that amount to invent more and more sophisticated drugs so as to beat detection. This tussle will go on, as the glory of sports is being besmirched. The athletes do not realize how they are harming their health, if not their very future.
