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Meeting de Limoges, Frech Athletics meet, is all set to accept Indian athletes' entries in the competition after initially shutting doors due to a high number of doping cases among them in the country, thanks to World Athletics' intervention on the matter.
Three athletes namely Eldhone Paul, the CWG gold medallist in the triple jump, Selva Prabhu, junior world silver medallist in the triple jump, and Jess Sandesh, high jumper, were expected to be a part of the Meeting de Limoges in France in June 2024.
“After discussion with World Athletics, we obviously agree to put the three athletes in the long list of pre-inscriptions of the Meeting. We will confirm the starting list no later than two weeks before the meeting,” organizers of the Meeting de Limoges said, as quoted by Sportstar.
Notably, Meeting de Limoges is a challenger-level athletics meet on the Continental Tour of the World Athletics calendar.
“Our wishes simply ensure our ability to propose a true sporting spectacle and we are sorry for the misunderstanding that has been generated. We wish to promote a sport “clean” and it is perfect,” the organizers wrote in an email.
The decision by Meeting de Limoges organizers sparked controversy
Since none of the Indian athletes appearing in the competition had failed a dope test, the initial decision taken by the organizers raised a lot of eyebrows.
After initially shutting doors on the Indian athletes' entry, the organizers stated,
“The organization took this decision in view of the various controversies related to doping and athletics in India. The organization does not want to take even the slightest risk on this topic in the framework of the meeting, and since there is no possibility of proving that your athletes are not part of doping, the organization prefers to remain cautious.”
Interestingly, the organizers of the Meeting de Limoges came to this initial decision following the release of the 2022 Testing Figures report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). According to the report, India registered the highest percentage of failed doping tests among nations that tested more than 2000 samples.
The report indicated that India conducted 3865 samples during the period under review, of which 125 returned adverse analytics findings, which accounted for 3.2 percent of the samples, WADA stated in its report.
When asked to comment about the incident, Adille Sumariwalla, president of the Indian Athletics Association and current vice president of World Athletics, refused to speak.
Regrettably, most recently, NADA provisionally suspended three minor track and field athletes and a minor weightlifter. Furthermore, a total of 44 names have been added to the list of athletes under provisional suspensions.
