Doping scandal taints junior athletics surge. Did coach Ramesh take the short cut?

The Kotak Pullela Gopichand Academy, a sprawling 10-acre high-performance centre in Hyderabad, houses an athletics academy where mornings and evenings usually reverberate with a vibrant symphony of rhythmic footfalls and gruff coaching commands. Tuesday of December 24 was no different. At least on the face of it. Beneath all the frenetic sporting activity, the academy was thrumming with a discordant note.

The institution, a beacon of national sporting dreams, had meticulously sculpted some of India’s most electrifying sprinters and fluent hurdlers in recent years. A crucible of new athletic talent. Overseeing it was Dronacharya Awardee Ramesh Nagapuri, whose name is taken with reverence. Short, hurried, with a sparkling smile, he is the very architect of India’s sprinting dreams, the conduit from the track to the podium for aspiring athletes.
But on that December day, tension coiled the air in the practice grounds with the sudden appearance of an unusual sight: officious-looking persons in stark white attire sticking out amidst the feast of colours of the athletes. Officers of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) had swooped down on the academy to probe one of coach Ramesh’s most valued sprinters, a youngster whose recent 200-metre exploits had raised hopes of the birth of a national star.

The young athlete, Shanmuga Srinivas Nalubothu, seeing the NADA officials, went into panic. In an instant, the sprinter mutated into a hurdler. He propelled himself over a concrete wall and before the officials could call out or try and stop him, he disappeared into the thick foliage. The officials stood frozen in disbelief; shock writ large on their faces. Of all the many tricks athletes use to duck them, this was a first.

A day later, NADA called Shanmuga and quizzed him on why he ran away on seeing them. He indicated that he did the disappearing act at the instance of Ramesh. A damning indictment of a celebrated coach.

As expected, a formal complaint landed at the desk of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), accusing the coach of complicity in making his athletes disappear rather than present themselves for NADA testing. The AFI hemmed and hawed and settled for its time-tested tactic: evasion. One top official went on a well-timed two-day leave. Another, already in the comfort of foreign shores, offered vague hearsay, admitting to hearing whispers but claiming to have seen no concrete evidence.

Ramesh, when confronted, offered a terse denial. “I know nothing of these allegations,” he said, wearing the Dronacharya Award as a shield against the accusations. “And I don’t believe them. I still have my job.”

Yes, Ramesh still has his job. And that’s the current tragedy of India’s junior athletics programme. Ramesh is on suspension and the programme is in suspended animation. A thick cloud of doubt now hangs over every remarkable performance in recent years. Is the slow and steady rise of Indian athletics just a mirage aided by performance-enhancing supplements?

More than four months have passed since that fateful day in December when Shanmuga leaped over the wall and breached the trust of athletics fans in India. There is no proof yet that Shanmuga took banned substances either voluntarily or at the instance of coach Ramesh. But there is one inviolable fact that is preliminary indictment of both: the fact that Shanmuga publicly escaped NADA scrutiny is enough evidence that something is rotten with the junior athletics programme. Why would Shanmuga scoot at Ramesh’s instance if he were clean? The answer to that one question is enough to turn the programme inside out. But in these four months, the AFI has not found time to ask itself this simple question for fear of getting the obvious answer.

And so we have a situation wherein young athletes, instead of readying for the upcoming fierce European competition, are left to wonder if the person they placed their trust in is the guy who imperilled their budding careers for personal, false, glory.

Therein lies the question – what hope remains for the future of the sport?

Pargat Singh, the former Indian hockey captain and now an MLA from Punjab, believes the system is rotten with coaches constantly exploiting players and athletes. “Today’s coaches only want to win,” he says. “Not that they shouldn’t. But the idea needs to be holistic at the junior level. Winning is a long-term battle. Doping shortens it.”
It also shortens the lives of athletes. Banning is just not a physical punitive action. It’s a psychological blow. Some even call it a psychic amputation. Doping exacts a far graver toll on the athlete than we can imagine. It shortens the athlete’s trajectory. It leaves a void which the athletes are unable to fill throughout their life, it reminds them of the humiliation.

However, NADA’s suspension of Ramesh has far greater repercussions than individual humiliation. The emergence of an entire generation of athletes will now be in doubt. Previous medallists will be eyed with suspicion. So much so even the ban on the women’s 100m national record holder Dutee Chand will be viewed through the same lens because she was coached by Ramesh. Should we hold those two silver medals in 2018 Jakarta to a greater scrutiny?

There’s an old saying: “If you keep dealing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.” That’s probably true in the litany of drug abuse cases that tumbled out in recent times: Sai Sangeetha, India’s fastest junior quarter-miler; Jeyavindhiya Jegadish, sixth in the 400m hurdles at the Under-20 Asians; Durga Singh, Khelo India Youth Games girls’ 1500m champion; V. Neha, silver medallist in the 100m and 200m at the Junior Nationals in Coimbatore; Summy, silver medallist at last year’s Fed Cup.

We are still to come to terms with 2011, a year scarred by a rash of positive tests that followed India’s triumph at the 2010 Commonwealth and Asian Games. The victorious 4x400m relay quartet tarnished by drug abuse, included names like Ashwini Akkunji, Sini Jose, and Mandeep Kaur. Back then, Ramesh served as an assistant under the disgraced Ukrainian trainer, Yuri Ogorodnik. Though he navigated those turbulent waters without formal charges, the whispers never died down. His complicity, though never proved, hung silently in the corridors of Indian athletics.

The shadows chased him wherever he went but his work continued as prestigious assignments fell into his lap. His legend grew as the man with the Midas touch. The disquieting past slowly receding into the backdrop as his athletes won medal after medal.

For a man famed for his oracle-like intuition, the fall is a tragedy. Famed for his ability to discern nascent talent which also includes India’s star hurdler, Jyothi Yarraji, at one stage, that reputation lies in tatters. His absence from the Indian contingent at the Asian U-18 in Saudi Arabia wasn’t just a logistical detail but a significant indictment of this storied legacy.

The phone lines to Ramesh remain stubbornly silent. Dutee Chand, his creation, could only muster a hesitant defence: “My coach is clean,” she insists, even though one discerns a tremor of doubt. “I don’t think he would do something like this.”

But it is the silence from the AFI President and other senior figures that is more baffling. Hopefully, the AFI or the Sports Authority of India – the employers of Ramesh – in trying to clean their stable, just might, this time around, lay a better foundation. Within the shattered landscape of the junior athletic programme, something good might just stir once again. And athletes will run in top national and international competitions. Not from NADA teams.