NEW DELHI: The National Anti Doping Agency has launched the Athletes Biological Passport (ABP) which will help the agency in detecting the effects of doping on an athlete’s body over a period of time through biological parameters, Hindustan Times reports.
The data garnered from ABP will be utilized to conduct specific anti-doping tests on 20 athletes with abnormal profiles to begin with. This project is a part of the Indian government’s anti-doping programme, which will aim to catch and punish heavily a larger number of athletes who cheat the game.
“The list will continue to grow and by Tokyo 2020, we should have all the members of the Indian contingent under the ABP programme,” NADA Director-General Navin Aggarwal was quoted as saying to HT.
It has taken India 9 years to adopt the ABP after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had approved its operating guidelines and revised them in January 2014. Former Olympic 1500m champion, Asli Cakir Alptekin of Turkey was banned due to having an abnormal ABP profile.
However, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has a lot to worry out since only 25 sportspersons out of 113 are from Athletics in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) for the ABP ahead of the Asian Games in Jakarta.
Under the RTP, an athlete is required to reveal their out-of-competitions whereabouts and should be willing to give the test at any location without any notice for a period of one hour.
“Since many top athletes don’t attend the camp and aren’t regularly tested, reducing the number in RTP will encourage athletes to take a shortcut,” AFI President Adille Sumariwalla opined.
However, Aggarwal believes that the threat of doping is more important to look at than results at present.
“Certain parameters, including performance in international events, are taken into consideration when compiling a new list of registered testing pool,” he signed off.
