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Dope tests of Indian labs not fully reliable: Official
After Pratima Kumari tested positive for doping on Thursday, an official at India's drug control centre said its results "cannot be relied upon 100 percent".
After weightlifter Pratima Kumari tested positive for doping at the Athens Olympics on Thursday, an official at India's drug control centre said that its laboratory results "cannot be relied upon 100 percent".
Pratima, 28, had entered in the 63-kg event but withdrew citing a back problem.
Later, organisers announced she was among five weightlifters who had tested positive for banned substances.
"The results at our lab cannot be relied upon 100 percent," a scientist at the doping control centre of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) said on condition of anonymity.
Though the laboratory has received two ISO certificates - ISO 900:2000 and ISO 17025 - they are not enough, as it does not meet the requirement of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The scientist at the SAI doping control centre also admitted that Indian scientists were not always aware of the new substances that are added to the banned list by WADA.
"This could be another reason why, if at all, an athlete might test negative here and positive abroad, because WADA might have added some substances to the list of banned drugs about which we are not aware," he said.
All 75 Indian athletes taking part in the Athens Olympics were assumed to have tested negative at the Delhi centre before they were cleared, though there were reports of two athletes having tested positive.
Officials, including Sports Secretary Meenaxi Anand Chaudhry, had termed these reports as "baseless".
It now appears that maybe Pratima could be one of those athletes, though Weightlifting Federation of India (WFI) president H.S. Dora said Thursday that all four Indian lifters had tested negative before leaving the country.
The SAI scientist said that the IOC keeps adding new substances to the banned list at every Olympic Games.
"The erythropoietin testing was done for the first time at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the hormone growth tests are being conducted for the first time at Athens," he said.
The scientist said these facilities, including provisions to conduct blood testing, are not available at the doping control centre at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
The discovery by coaches of new medicines and substances that could escape stringent dope tests are also making the task of WADA, IOA and other anti-doping agencies difficult.
The suspension for those testing positive for banned substances is usually two years, unless the athlete is a repeat offender.
