18 August,2009 11:17 AM IST | | Shachi Sharma
EVERYTIME AN ATHELETE PROVIDES A 'SAMPLE' TO WADA, HE OR SHE DOES SO IN FULL VIEW OF THEIR OFFICIAL. THIS RULE CAME INTO PLACE BECAUSE PRE-2008, MANY USED PROSTHETICS LIKE THE WHIZZINATOR, A KIT WITH A FAKE PENIS AND DRIED URINE, TO FOOL DOPING TESTS
Excepting cricketers, the entire sports fraternity in India adheres to the clause of full observation of an athlete during urine sample collection. But, from the World Anti Doping Agency's (WADA) point of view, this condition arose because of a few sportsmen who had a rather peculiar outlook on anti-doping.
In May 2005, an American National Football League player was detained at Minneapolis's St Paul International Airport, after authorities found a state-of-the-art prosthetic in his luggage with a packet of dehydrated urine. Words of his predicament were leaked and Onterrio Smith became an inadvertent billboard for the Whizzinator.
The Whizzinator was intended to fraudulently defeat drug tests. Strapped to your inner thigh, the kit also contains dried urine and a syringe, heater packs to keep the urine at body temperature, a fake penis available in several skin tones including white, tan, Latino, brown, and black, and an instruction manual. The company, Puck Technology, also offered a female version, called "Number One."
On November 24, 2008, the company was banned in the United States for selling drug paraphernalia. The company's websites, whizzinator.com and gonumber1.com, were no longer live as of November 2008. WADA prohibited sportsmen and women from using any device that tampers drug test results. Famous bodybuilder George Spellwin's glittering career was further called into question when bank statements relating to the Whizzinator came into the public domain.
To combat the use of whizzinators in sports, WADA came up with a new rule in 2008: full observation of an athlete passing urine into a cup to assure something like a whizzinator isn't in play. Their website says, "Once in the toilet facility the Athlete must remove all clothing between the waist and mid-thigh, in order that the Witness has an unobstructed view of sample provision. Sleeves should be rolled up so that the Athlete's arms and hands are also clearly visible. The Witness shall directly observe the Athlete provide the urine sample, adjusting his/her position so as to have a clear view of the sample leaving the Athlete's body."
From the World Badminton Championships in Hyderabad, World No 15, Chetan Anand, agrees, "Yes, we have been complying with an official coming along with us in the doping room. But I don't have a problem with it because they tell you an hour prior to the test. It's important because sometimes players can use fake urine."
Despite the ban, whizzinators and other such devices are available online, including the Indian cyber space.
Former All England Champion and current Indian National Coach of Badminton, Pullela Gopichand, says, "Since one official accompanies the players and witnesses the act of urine sample collection, such devices are not really relevant to sports anymore. Even if these websites are operational, they will not make a difference to the world of sports as they have been banned by WADA."
Suresh Kalmadi, former president of the Indian Olympic Association, openly declared in the 2002 National Games that he would do his best to eradicate doping from the Indian sports map. Strict measures were taken to catch offenders in Hyderabad. Ironically, since then, Indian weightlifter Kunjurani Devi was caught using drug stimulants, Pratima Kumari was caught injecting testosterone, judoka Aruna and Sanmacha Chanu were caught using urine cleansers or diuretics, Tejinder Singh and Edwin Raju were caught with Stanzonol and discus throwers Seema Antil and Neelam J Singh were caught using stimulants.
Orthopedic and sports medicine specialist, Dr Dilip Nadkarni, says, "Diuretics or urine cleansers can now be traced in the test and if a player is caught with a urinator, they could face a ban. What worries international anti-doping agencies are other prohibited ways that include blood transfusion doping which can increase the blood's oxygen carrying capacity. This is not a common practice though because it has health hazards like blood infection.
"For example, erythropoietin or EPO stimulates formation and growth of Red Blood Corpuscles, in turn increasing endurance without the presence of drugs. It's difficult to detect because testing must be done within eight hours once the sample is taken. Agrenine, an amino acid, is also believed to increase lean body mass and is most difficult to detect. At present there is no accepted method for detecting these transfusions, since a few athletes have naturally high RBC concentrations. A player has to demonstrate this through a series of consistent results over an extended period of time. "Research is in progress and WADA promises that a test will eventually be introduced. A famous example is that of athlete Marion Jones, who passed all the tests easily as it could not be detected whether she had injected growth hormones or whether they were naturally present in her body, until she actually confessed to it.
"In India, some players could be taking anabolic steroids and performance enhancement drugs; may be they stop taking it before their event to cleanse their body in case of a test."
Officials fear newer ways like stem cell doping a practice of enhancing athletic performance through various beneficial effects of stems cells injected into the bloodstream. There are no documented cases, yet there are suspicions that the practice may already be emerging. With cut-throat competition, fair play may soon give way to ingenious methods of faking it.
