When the Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, Ashwini Akkunji and Mandeep Kaur quartet blazed to a golden victory at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium last year, they were carrying the baton for the hopes that had stayed sturdy in the face of all the depressing stories ahead of the Commonwealth Games?stories about shameful delays and R4,000 toilet rolls, a collapsed footbridge and a crumpled stadium ceiling, etc. The relay team went on to repeat the feat at the Guangzhou Asian Games. It represented our main athletic medal hope for next year?s London Olympics, a hope that?s gotten dashed just as surely as Sini, Ashwini and Mandeep have tested positive for banned, performance-enhancing drugs. Before getting into how the Indian sports establishment is responding to this latest reversal in fortunes, let?s cast our mind to yet another scandal from Commonwealth days. Among a slew of athletes caught doping then, wrestler Rajiv Tomar was an Arjuna Awardee, which is what Ashwini was also poised to become. We were told athletes? education was a problem, they were receiving substandard medical support, and these issues would get addressed. And this is exactly what we are being told today too. The National Anti-Doping Agency director says his organisation plans to publish guide books in regional languages. Medical outlets near the Patiala institute where most national camps are conducted are being raided for banned drugs, as if the authorities just woke up to this menace. Every time a doping scandal hits us, we act like it?s happening for the first time, all over again.
Institutional memory is weak because institutions are weak. What says this better than that the Sports Authority of India?s fact-finding mission is headed by an executive director who is actually responsible for the conduct of the camps? A Ukrainian coach has been fired but if he was distributing supplements, shouldn?t higher authorities have been tracking this closely? The coach charges that athletes have to buy food supplements from outside because the ones provided by the authorities aren?t up to the mark. The coach?s critics counter that there is something fishy going on behind the erstwhile Iron Curtain, that athletes like Ashwini seem to return from Ukrainian camps with inexplicably enhanced performances. Against this unseemly bedlam, sports reforms like limiting the age and tenure of leading officials are hanging fire. And without a systemic overhaul, there?s a fat chance that Abhinav Bindra will get lots of company in the near future.
