Doping: Ten lifters in weightlifting caught in doping, used banned performance enhancing drugs for medals

The trend of banned performance enhancing drugs in sports for medals and jobs is not decreasing. In the National Weightlifting Championship held in Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh) in January this year, not one or two but 10 weightlifters have been found dope positive. All of them are medal winners. Among them, seven are men and three are women. The surprising thing is that a cocktail of three to four types of banned drugs has been found in the samples of some of these lifters. These include steroids, SARMs, stimulants, everything. NADA has temporarily banned these lifters.

Lifters are young

Haryana’s Somnath and Anush won bronze medals in 109 and 67 kg in Itanagar. Both are between 18 and 20 years of age, but their case tells about the roots of doping in sports and its seriousness. Anabolic steroids metandienone, drostanolone, ligandrol (SARM) and stimulant miphentermine have been found in Somnath’s sample. Recently, so many banned drugs have not been found in a single sample. Trenbolone, Ostarine (SARM), miphentermine have been found in Anush’s sample. Other positive players include Devishri (Andhra Pradesh), Sagar (Bihar), Mrinmay Gogoi (Assam), Gaurav (Police Board), Rakhi Purohit (Rajasthan), Sheetal Bhati (Haryana), Sumit Rajput (Madhya Pradesh), Sachin Panwar (Uttar Pradesh).

Ten coaches also banned

The Indian Weightlifting Federation has also taken cognizance of the increasing doping cases outside the national camp and has imposed a three-year ban on 10 coaches. These are the coaches of those 10 lifters who were caught doping in the 2023 Nagarcoil National Weightlifting. These include two each from Haryana, UP and one from Coach Services. They have been banned till 2026. They cannot participate in any training activities of the federation. Federation President Sahdev Yadav says that this step has been taken to prevent doping outside the camp. NADA monitors the national camp, but preventing the lifters coming directly to play in the championship from doping is a challenge.