Dope shame brings gloom to India camp

Yadav, who finished sixth in 1 hour, 42 minutes, 54 seconds in the 20km walk held on October 9 on Central Delhi streets, tested positive for prohibited anabolic agent 19-Norandrosterone.

The announcement that she had flunked the drug test deflated India's euphoria over their best-ever show in the Games in which they have scooped up 32 gold, 26 silver and 33 bronze medals -- their highest in Games history.

The day also saw England displace India from the second spot as they bagged two gold to draw level on the yellow metal count and move up a rung above with more number of silver medals.

England now have 32 gold, 53 silver and 43 bronze medals.

Yadav's name was withheld by the Commonwealth Games Federation initially and then revealed through a statement.

The statement said the shamed athlete would either attend or will be represented at a provisional hearing before the CGF Court today.

"The CGF can now confirm that the A sample of Rani Yadav, a competitor in the women’s 20 kilometre road race on October 9, 2010, was found to contain 19-Norandrosterone, a prohibited anabolic agent under category S1 of the WADA list of prohibited substances and methods," the CGF statement said.

"Yadav has been provisionally suspended from the Games and, in accordance with the ADS, the athlete will attend, or be represented, at a provisional hearing before the CGF Federation court later today," it added.

However, on the field, India continued their medal harvest, picking up a silver and a bronze before signing off from the Dr Karni Singh shooting.

The silver was claimed by Heena Sidhu in the women's individual 10m air pistol while 2006 Games hero Samresh Jung earned the bronze in 25m standard pistol individual event.

Heena missed the gold by a whisker as her 481.6 was just 0.3 less then Malaysia's Pei Chin Bibiana, who shot an impressive 481.9 to clinch the gold. Australia's Dina Aspandiyarova bagged the bronze with 478.8.

The Indian woman shooter had won the gold in the 10m pairs event yesterday with Annu Raj Singh while Jung clinched the 25m pairs silver with Chandrasekhar Kumar Chaudhary.
'Goldfinger' Jung, who had won seven medals including five gold in the last edition in Melbourne four years ago, had to be content with a bronze medal in the standard pistol event after he totalled 559.

Sidhu's silver, along with Jung's bronze in men's singles 25-metre standard pistol, compensated for Narang's flop show in men's singles 50-metre rifle prone.
But Gagan Narang failed to add to his tally of four gold by falling by the wayside for the second day running in his last event.

"The idea was to get maximum number of gold but I was a little bit struggling with prone position," Narang later said.

Indian shooters bade goodbye with 30 medals -- 14 gold, 11 silver and five bronze -- three better than at Melbourne.

Olympian Achanta Sharath Kamal's dreams of defending his table tennis men's singles title went up in smoke after he lost 3-4 to Singapore's Yang Zi in the semi finals.
But the paddler joined hands with compatriot Subhajit Saha to enter the men's doubles final.

Sharath, ranked 40th in the world, put up a valiant fight against Yang in the last four clash but squandered an early 1-0 lead before going down closely in front of a capacity crowd.

Sharath and former national champion Saha joined hands to despatch Andrew Baggaley and L Pitchford of England 3-2 and enter men's doubles final, assuring the host country at least a silver in that category.

India are thus assured of at least four medals from the ping pong sport as it will be an all-Indian men's singles bronze medal play-off clash tomorrow, between Sharath and Soumyadeep Roy for the men's singles bronze medal .

Indian women have already clinched a team silver, while their male counterparts have fetched a bronze in the team events.

The doping shame, often the scourge of India's stints in multi-discipline events, came to light at the customary morning press conference addressed by Commonwealth Games Federation chief Michael Fennell.

"We have received another positive (dope) result. The notice has been issued to the (Indian) chef de mission (Bhuvneshwar Kalita) at 9 am today," Fennell told the customary morning press conference here.

"We (CGF) met late last night and served the notice to the chef de mission (Kalita) at 9 am," the CGF chief said.

OC secretary-general Lalit Bhanot described the positive dope test returned by the Indian athlete as "unfortunate" and said this shame has happened despite everyone's best effort to avoid it.