JOIN US“If these athletes are culpable of doping offence, so are their coaches, support staff and the sports administrators,” Chandran said, commenting on the slew of positive cases.
“Mandeep Kaur and Jauna Murmu are not criminals, they are victims of a system. Doping in sports is not an individual effort, it is a team effort. A positive dope test in a top class athlete is not an individual failing, but it is a system failure,” he added.
It has been reported that both the athletes have, in their preliminary explanations, stated that they had not taken anything that could have led to these ‘positive’ tests and they had only consumed supplements being provided at the national camp, and Chandran is least surprised.
“It is not surprising that Mandeep and Jauna are blaming the food supplements provided at Patiala for their positive dope tests. It is a fashion now for athletes to put the blame on food supplements when they are caught. Mandeep is found positive for a cocktail of three anabolic steroids and Jauna for two of them,” he said.
Criminal offence
Anabolic steroids, Chandran said, are prescription drugs and trafficking these drugs is a major criminal offence. Since these drugs are now found in the system of these top athletes, it is a national concern and is a fit case for police enquiry, rather than just a doping offence.
Chandran revealed that in the early nineties, there was one doctor, Dr ‘B’, who would follow the athletes everywhere with syringes loaded with Russian made injections.
“He was a trendsetter. When objections were raised on his practicing medicine in India, that too without licence from the Medical Council of India, the going got tough for him and for the authorities who sent him back subsequently.
“Then came his copy, the so called ‘recovery experts’. These recovery experts also smuggled in Russian made medicines to administer them to the athletes.
“They even sold their medicines to the local chemist shops and directed the athletes to purchase them. When such medicines were confiscated by some camp officials and local doctors, the ‘Godfathers’ of the recovery experts brushed them aside,” he said.