India’s sports ministry has sacked four officials at its Patiala training centre as part of an investigation into an embarrassing doping scandal.
The dismissals follow the sacking of a Ukrainian track and field coach on Tuesday after eight athletes tested positive for banned anabolic steroids.
The Sports Authority of India (SAI) had conducted raids in the rooms and hostels of athletes, officials and coaches in Patiala and Bangalore as part of the investigation, local media reported on Thursday.
“Two SAI officials attached with the athletes training programme, and other two women officials of the elite sports women’s hostel have also been removed,” SAI said in a statement.
A report had also been lodged with the local police in Patiala to initiate action against local chemists selling banned drugs, the statement added.
Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal said some athletes had told her that they knowingly took banned substances. “I know many athletes and weightlifters who themselves told me that ‘we take it’,'” local media quoted Nehwal as saying at a promotional event in Mumbai late on Wednesday.
“It’s really sad they don’t know what they are taking. I’m sure everyone knows WADA rules. They’re very simple to follow. They have a website which has a list of all the banned medicines and the ones that can be used,” she added.
SAI to set up a regulatory body to monitor athletes
Having apparently learnt a lesson the hard way after the doping scandal, the Sports Authority of India is mulling on having a regulatory body that will closely monitor athletes whose performance graph improves radically in a short span of time for possible use of performance enhancing drugs.
“It is a cause of concern. From now on, we would be more vigilant and keep a watch on those athletes whose performance level improves a lot in a short span of time,” SAI Director General Desh Deepak Verma told reporters.
Verma, however, sidestepped the issue about SAI and AFI’s fetish for appointing coaches from the erstwhile Soviet block countries like Belarus and Ukraine which have long been known as the hub for “systematic doping and masking”.
“It’s unfair to blame a particular country for this. What we can do from now on is to thoroughly check the credentials of coaches who are being appointed. If we find that a certain coach has his wards regularly being caught for doping, then we won’t go ahead with the appointment,” he said.
