NADA records 71 positive tests but collected less samples last year

New Delhi:Athletics continued to be India’s Achilles’ heel in its anti-doping campaign, accounting for 21 of the 71 positive tests recorded by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) in the last one year.
NADA tested 3,174 urine and blood samples during the last year which showed 71 adverse analytical findings, which indicates the number of positive tests. There were nine atypical findings, samples that were found suspicious and possibly required further investigations, as per the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
While the number of dope cheats has reduced from 110 in 2015 to 71 in 2017, it needs to be factored in that NADA tested a bigger pool of 4,734 players back then.
A break-up of NADA testing reveals that in athletics, 815 tests were conducted in 2017 with 502 being in-competition and 229 being out of competition. Of these, 84 were blood samples. The second highest number of dope offenders came from powerlifting, which made up for 14 positive tests out of the 50 in-competition samples collected. Weightlifters also predictably remained in the top bracket of the dope offenders with 11 positive tests out of 359 collected samples.
The most startling revelation is the sport of bodybuilding where NADA collected only 18 samples and nine turned out to be positive. Popular sports like football and hockey had one positive report each from the 318 and 156 samples, respectively. Wrestling had four dope cheats among the 199 tested. Volleyball and judo had two positive reports each while boxing had four such results.
Interestingly, Indian boxers had the highest number of out of competition testing — 270, which is more than athletics (229). The next highest out of competition testing is that of weightlifting with 177 tests.