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Setback for girls’s relay crew attributable to doping, damage pull out
New Delhi: India’s 4×400 ladies’s relay crew has been rocked by a doping scandal and damage withdrawal on the eve of the Asian Athletics Championships beginning in Gumi, South Korea, from Tuesday.
Sneha Kolleri, who was a part of ladies’s 4x400m ladies’s and blended relay squads, has returned optimistic for stanozolol in a take a look at carried out by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU). On Monday, AIU confirmed her optimistic take a look at and knowledgeable that the athlete was provisionally suspended on Might 23.
It has been learnt that she was examined by AIU through the World Relays Championships in Guangzhou, China two weeks again. Sneha competed in blended relay (4x400m) by which India didn’t qualify for the world championships.
Earlier than she might board the flight to Gumi, Athletics Federation of India (AFI) withdrew Sneha from the crew.
It has been learnt that one other member of the relay squad Sandramol Sabu has additionally pulled out attributable to damage. She has not travelled with the crew to South Korea. That leaves solely 4 members — Rupal Chaudhary, Subha Venkatesan, Jisna Mathew, and Kunja Rajitha — for the ladies’s relay (4x400m) and blended relay competitions.
Sneha was a part of the nationwide camp (for relay groups) on the Nationwide Centre of Excellence in Trivandrum. Her private better of 53 seconds in 400m got here this 12 months on the Nationwide Federation Championships in Kochi final month, the place she received bronze medal. She was a part of each the ladies’s and blended relays squads on the Asian Championships.
Aishwarya Mishra, who has the season’s better of 51.12s, was not chosen within the crew as she didn’t compete within the Federation Cup. Rupal has the subsequent greatest timing of 52.41s, adopted by Vithya Ramraj (52.81s). Sneha has the fourth greatest timing this season whereas Subha Venkatesan (53.35s) is sixth within the record. The Indian relay groups are but to qualify for the world championships.
That is the third excessive profile case of doping this season. Earlier Hangzhou Asian Video games 10,000m silver medallist Kartik Kumar and javelin thrower Shivpal Singh failed dope exams. Additionally, AFI junior crew coach N Ramesh was suspended by NADA on fees of ‘complicity.’
AIU revealed on Monday that one other Indian athlete — Varsha Tekam, who participated within the Nationwide Cross Nation Championships in January, has been suspended for evading/refusing to submit pattern.
