A little over a year after she caught the imagination of fans of sport in India with a gold-medal winning run in the Asian Athletics Championships, Marimuthu Gomathi has been handed a four-year suspension for an anti-doping rule violation. Four of her samples tested positive for prohibited substance Nandrolone and its metabolite 19-Norandrosterone.
The 30-year-old Income Tax employee Gomathi, who stole everyone’s thunder by revealing that her father had once partaken a meal kept aside for cattle so that she could eat a proper meal, will have to return the 800m gold won in Doha in April last year. She tried everything possible to avert a sanction but did not convince the international disciplinary tribunal that heard her defence.
In her brief submitted to the tribunal on January 14, 2020, Gomathi included an expert report by Dr. MP Saravanan, Professor, Stanley Medical College & Hospital, Chennai. Her arguments included alleged departures from the International Standard for Testing and Investigations as well as the International Standard for Laboratories.
Through her lawyers Saurabh Mishra and Srinivasan Saimani as well as advisor Vishnu Ram, Gomathi sought to raise a number of issues including error in chain of custody – without specifying which of the four samples – and long period of storage of a sample that could result in the generation of the prohibited substance in the sample.
She said there was a discrepancy between volume and specific gravity as indicated in the Dope Control Form and the laboratory documents for the March 18 sample and therefore there was a high probability that integrity of the sample was compromised or that it did not belong to the athlete. AIU produced expert testimony by Prof. Martial Saugy of the University of Lausanne to refute that.
She also said the fact that two samples were collected after the confirmatory trail held in Patiala on April 13 were in violation of the sample collection guidelines. AIU produced the Dope Control Officer’s testimony to justify the collection of two samples. DCO Jay Singh said the athlete had erred in splitting sample between A and B bottles.
As far as the fourth sample was concerned, Gomathi alleged that the Doha laboratory handled and analysed the sample improperly, flouting the WADA International Standard for Laboratories. She sought further analysis of the sample tested by the Doha laboratory to ‘clearly rule out any uncertainty in this matter’ including ‘manipulation error or switching of samples’.
AIU confirmed that there was no evidence to support any assertion that there had been any manipulation and/or switching of the sample tested in Doha. Prof. Saugy also said that the manner in which the Doha laboratory handled the testing was in keeping with the WADA International Standard for Laboratories.
She will also lose the 1500m title won by edging out the fancied PU Chitra and Lily Das at the Federation Cup in Patiala in March 2019, but in a small consolation, she will retain the 800m gold, won in a personal best time of 2:03.21 a couple of days before the metric mile. It is a reminder for NADA that it may have been slow off the blocks in not testing her after her 800m victory.
A look at the dates of the sample collection, completion of tests, intimation to the athlete will reveal that Indian agencies — National Dope Testing Laboratory and National Anti-Doping Agency — were slack. The first sample was collected in Patiala on March 18, 2019 and NDTL shared the result with NADA only on May 2, 2019. In turn, NADA informed the athlete only on May 21.
The second and third samples were collected on April 13, 2019 and NDTL shared the results only on May 27, defeating the very purpose of the test ahead of the team’s departure to Doha. If NADA and NDTL had shown the agility they did before the Asian Games when Monika Choudhary was tested at a confirmatory trial in New Delhi, India would have benefitted immensely.
Here is a link to a piece that I wrote last year when she was provisionally suspended. NDTL does not come out smelling of roses. In fact, had the National Dope Testing Laboratory, now suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and NADA been on the ball, it is likely that Gomathi would not have been on the flight to Doha for the Asian Athletics Championships. And India could have been saved of some embarrassment.
A slightly shorter version of this article first appeared in Mail Today on June 9, 2020
Has Gomathi filed a CAS appeal. Deadline must be over. She had claimed consumption of non-veg food as a possible cause of her dope positive!
You might be understood that veg hamberg can also cought in dope cause the vegitable grower also inject the various medicine for growth of vegetable even in last night of sell, be a research topic Dope mischief through To become billionor over a night by vendor & grower of food & fruits.