For a cricket loving nation like India, the Olympics have always remained a secondary choice with a major chunk of the population being ignorant of the worth of a medalist. On a general note, we tend to forget the extraordinary feats accomplished by these athletes after a certain period of time and well it doesn’t seem wrong in the first instance to do so but in the process, we are unwillingly killing the sporting culture which needs to be developed in the country.
In the Rio Olympics, we are on the verge of drawing a blank in terms of gold medals and all thanks goes to our sports bodies who are so embroiled in the internal issues that they find it hard to even provide the basic facilities to our athletes let alone modern infrastructure, coaching staff or supplements. As a result of this lack of resources, our athletes have to rely on self-sustainable methods and techniques which often leads to technical problems considering the “International standards” being practised everywhere else.
The year 2016 has been a very bumpy ride for the world sporting community with major concerns over doping, mismanagement and corruption reaching to an all-time high. Right from the state-sponsored doping allegation on the Russian Federation leading to a permanent ban on its 67 athletes to our homegrown controversy of Narsingh Pancham Yadav, we have seen the worst of sports.
A victory against the odds
A couple of months back the name of a relatively unknown wrestler Narsingh Pancham Yadav started doing rounds among the media houses albeit for all the wrong reasons. It was claimed that Narsingh Yadav who was a recent recipient of the "World Championship" bronze medal can’t be confirmed an Olympic spot solely because of his third-placed finish as another well-known wrestler Mr Sushil Kumar, a double Olympic medalist wanted the same spot.
Now what is interesting to note here is that Sushil used to take part in the 66kg weight category but unfortunately it got scrapped from the Rio Olympics and hence he was forced to switch categories to 74kg where India already had a strong presence in form of Yadav and because of this Sushil demanded a trial to grab the elusive Olympic berth.
The Wrestling Federation of India siding with the Narsingh bid clearly laid down that Yadav would be the representative for India at the Olympics out rightly rejecting the claims of Sushil Kumar.
Sushil seeing no hope for a solution immediately approached the Delhi High Court with the argument that the demand for such special trial is not something new for the Indian wrestling as a similar trial has taken place in the 90s and even tried to back up his arguments with the affidavits. In the end, on June 6, the court gave its landmark decision in the favour of Narsingh camp by rejecting the unreasonable request of Sushil Kumar and reprimanding the wrestler and his companions for producing the false affidavits.
Also read: Did the WFI get it all wrong in the Narsingh Yadav case?
Even before this ruckus was to be settled, Narsingh found himself in the midst of another controversy with his name being now mired in a doping infringement. What was to be followed became the talk of the town and it was rightly so as the UP-born wrestler name was being dragged into one controversy after another.
NADA or National Anti-Doping Agency an independent body registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1890 which is entrusted with the task to maintain clean sports in India and keep a check on the doping violations sent a notice to Narsingh days after the “Supreme Court” judgment stating that his sample has an “Adverse Analytical Finding”.
An “Adverse Analytical Finding” report is issued to an athlete by the concerned National Anti-Doping Agency in case the athlete's sample is found to be positive i.e. if it contains any of the "Prohibited Substances" under the "World Anti-Doping Agency List of Prohibited Substances or Methods".
In the case of Narsingh, his “Sample A” was initially found to be in the presence of excessive Methandienone an age old anabolic agent listed under the “WADA Code”. Methandienone is generally detected among the urine samples of weightlifters and is used to gain muscle.
Consequently, a temporary ban was put on the wrestler and he was barred from taking part in any sporting activity. Going by the “Results Managements Process”, NADA asked the wrestler to have his “B Sample” tested which again turned out to be positive and as a result of that Narsingh was immediately summoned to appear before the “NADA Disciplinary Panel”.
Meanwhile, the Narsingh bandwagon was of the view that someone is trying to falsely implicate the wrestler to hinder his participation in the Olympics and even gave a detailed description of the life threats and threats of involuntary injuries being hurled at the wrestler. A question regarding the contamination of supplements also came into the picture but it was later proved that the supplements provided to Narsingh were clean.
Due to the ever rising media coverage of this event and the Olympic participation at stake, NADA was forced to conduct speedy hearings and after two such hearings involving the wrestler, the “NADA Disciplinary Panel” came out with a very unsurprising result whereby they gave a clean chit to the wrestler after being satisfied with the arguments presented by his counsel.
As per the Media Reports, the “NADA Disciplinary Panel” accepted the wrestler plea on the basis of circumstantial evidence provided to them apart from confirming his participation to the Rio Olympics by terminating his temporary ban much to the delight of the fans and supporters of the wrestler.
The inscrutable decision
Everything was moving in the right direction for the star grappler who had bright prospects of a medal but the unfortunate events taking place a day before has overturned the momentary gaiety of a billion Indians as Narsingh has been handed a four-year ban by the “Court for Arbitration of Sport” for an involuntary doping allegation. Though it was quite expected of the WADA to go on an appeal against the “NADA Disciplinary Panel” decision, the horrendous arbitral award from the “Ad Hoc CAS Appeals Arbitration Panel” setting aside the previous award of the NADA panel was never on the minds of the right thinking Indians.
Just a day before the commencement of Narsingh’s campaign for a probable gold medal, CAS has dealt such a severe blow on the wrestler that it remains to be seen that if Narsingh can ever feature again on the wrestling mat considering the large pool of youth brigade available at disposal for Indian wrestling. Following the general trend and procedure, CAS is yet to publish the full arbitral award but the media release has more or less ended the dream of Narsingh and his loyal fans.
CAS in most probability has rendered this decision in the light of Rule 10.2.1 under the WADA Code, 2015 after taking into consideration “The List of Prohibited Substances”, “Circumstantial Evidence”, “Expert Opinions” and “Witness Accounts” thereby rejecting the plea of “Elimination of Ineligibility” under Rule 10.5.1.2 put up by the counsel of Narsingh.
A lot of doubts still remain over the reasonability of the decision as the time which is taken by the panel to decide such a complex case is way less than the standard time period taken by the CAS court in proceedings of such nature.
According to the CAS statute, the aggrieved has a remedy to appeal against the decision of Anti-Doping Division under Article 21 in the original CAS seat at Lausanne, Switzerland within 21 days of the issuance of Arbitral Award but as time is short for Narsingh there is no hope left for the revival of his Rio participation.
The structure of the CAS is equivalent to a Swiss Arbitration Organisation and hence it has to surrender before the supreme authority of the “Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland” who takes the final decision on the Appeals against the CAS arbitral award” which means that Narsingh has two remedies left as of now to contest against the four-year ban levied against him.
Even though this process of the remedial proceedings looks quite captivating on paper but in realistic circumstances, overruling takes place only on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction, violation of elementary procedural rules (e.g. violation of the right to a fair hearing) or incompatibility with public policy and only once an overruling has taken place on the merits of the case.
The chances for restitution look slender for Narsingh but the harm has been already done with India missing on a real medal prospect in Rio. Although the ineligibility period would end before the beginning of the “Tokyo Olympics” but a comeback looks a distant dream for Narsingh who has a doubtful future ahead.
The Need of the Hour
The question that remains to be answered is not whether Narsingh’s prosecution by the CAS is justifiable or not , it is about whether the Indian sports, its aficionados and the stakeholders are on a downward spiral because the situation prevailing as of now proves the same.
If it was not enough for Indian sports to face a resource crunch and international backlash because of its policy framework, we are now on a journey where we are sharing more loyalty towards our camps based on the regional, caste and language barriers rather than collaborating to form a stronger sporting community.
The Narsingh Yadav issue is an eye-opener to show the nation that our sports system is at an all-time low, where people are ready to minimise the expansion and development of the sports in the country so as to fulfil their own hunger for revenge.
The media has pointed out fingers on the Sushil Kumar entourage even though there is no substantial proof to such uncanny allegations but one thing which must be understood irrespective of all the conspiracy theories that we can’t demand or expect medals from our athletes until and unless we can manage to provide them access to safe environment and financial resources.
Until then, we must try, try to make a change at least in the mindset.
