WADA’s Operation Carousel to put NADA on the correct course

NADA's lack of resources led to inadequate testing of athletes and poor monitoring of whereabouts info. WADA's 'Operation Carousel' uncovered this and recommended corrective steps. NADA has since doubled sample collection staff, improved processes and brought in additional resources, resulting in increased out-of-competition testing and improved investigative and intelligence capacities with WADA's help.

Athlete missing! Phones switched off!

How often have we heard of Indian athletes going incommunicado after a stunning performance? And often, while watching the sudden and magical improvement in performances, one has often wondered whether the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) has a sincere and smart out-of-competition strategy in place to catch cheats.

A few years ago, there were reports that many prominent athletes who went on to win medals at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games did not face a single out-of-competition dope test.

The World Anti-Doping Agency had been watching these strange patterns in Indian sport closely and, following an investigation by its independent Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) Department into allegations that elements of NADA’s testing programme were not in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code and international standard for testing and investigations, the I&I has published its summary report which was released by WADA on Tuesday night.

Launched in 2018 the I&I investigation, known as ‘Operation Carousel’, found that NADA did not carry out adequate testing on some athletes in its registered testing pool across various sports and also did not closely monitor athletes’ whereabouts information.

The investigation monitored select sports and athletes and, as a result, in cooperation with NADA, 12 positive tests (Adverse Analytical Findings) and 97 whereabouts failures of 70 athletes were identified. These are now subject to results management processes as appropriate.

In 2019, on Operation Carousel’s recommendation, NADA tested many powerlifters and seven of them were caught doping and sanctioned.