Among nation’s quickest athletes, even dope testers can’t attain her

A CAT-AND-MOUSE sport is on between one of many nation’s prime 400m lady athletes and dope testers after her sudden enchancment in timings caught the eye of a worldwide anti-doping watchdog.

During a latest nationwide athletics meet, the athlete ran a number of seconds sooner than her earlier greatest timing, made it to India’s all-time greatest record, and certified for the World Championship. The efficiency additionally introduced her on the radar of Monaco-based Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an impartial physique with an goal to weed out cheats.

But the AIU testers haven’t been capable of hint the athlete — and he or she has gone incommunicado, The Indian Express has learnt.

The athlete was to fly to Antalya in Turkey mid-April with different quartermilers and members of the 4×100 girls’s relay squad however didn’t report earlier than departure.

Presuming she can be in Turkey, dope management officers authorised by the AIU travelled to Antalya to gather her samples. Keen to trace her down, they then travelled to Mumbai and Haryana, the place her private coach hails from, however have had no luck up to now in finding the athlete who is without doubt one of the nation’s quickest runners.

According to sources, officers and coaches of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) have tried to succeed in the athlete over telephone however they’re nonetheless at nighttime about her whereabouts. Her present private coach, who has been punished for doping previously, advised the AFI that the athlete has not been in contact since early April.

The Indian Express known as the athlete’s registered telephone quantity a number of occasions on Monday however discovered that it was “out of network coverage area”. Senior AFI officers declined to remark.

“She was to travel with the team to Antalya, Turkey, on April 14. But she did not show up. We have not been able to contact her because her phone number has been switched off. We do not know why she has not joined the camp. She should have been in Turkey with the rest of the athletes but she is absconding. The AIU is also looking for her to collect samples for dope testing,” an AFI supply mentioned.

The lady athlete was a part of the nationwide camp 4 years in the past after she clocked sub-53 second timings at a college meet. But coaches have been baffled after she slowed down significantly on the camp.

The AFI is eager that the athlete joins the nationwide camp for 2 causes: her timings make her a powerful contender for the 4x400m girls’s relay squad, and athletes at nationwide camps are often examined for banned performance-enhancing substances. If a relay workforce finishes on the rostrum and one of many runners checks constructive, the workforce loses the medal.

There have been a variety of circumstances previously of athletes staying away from nationwide camps, coaching with their private coaches after which failing dope checks.

Prominent amongst them is quarter-miler Nirmala Sheoran, the 2017 Asian Athletics Championship gold-medal winner. A 12 months later, on the Asian Games she was not fielded within the relay squad, completed fourth within the particular person 400 metre race — and failed a dope check a few months later to obtain a four-year ban.

Dope testing in Indian athletics has been within the information after the AIU introduced final week that discus throw star Kamalpreet Kaur, a sixth-place finisher on the Tokyo Olympics, had examined constructive for Stanozolol, an anabolic steroid banned underneath the World Anti-Doping Agency code.

Kamalpreet was within the nationwide camp earlier than the Summer Games. She is the primary Indian lady to interrupt the 65-metre barrier and was anticipated to win medals on the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games and the World Championships.

A male javelin thrower, who’s an Asian Athletics Championship medallist and Tokyo Olympian, had additionally failed a dope check.

Although there is no such thing as a dope taint but concerning the lady athlete’s latest blistering run, intelligence-based out-of-competition testing is a method used to maintain the game clear.

Since 2017, the AIU has taken over World Athletics’ anti-doping programme, together with testing and intelligence-gathering. Corruption, betting, and manipulation of age and outcomes additionally fall underneath the AIU’s purview.

Top athletes throughout sport are named in a registered testing pool and should be obtainable at a self-declared location throughout a specified one-hour window day-after-day throughout which testers may land as much as gather samples. Others whose performances enhance out of the blue, like the girl athlete, are on the radar of companies which struggle doping in sport.