New Delhi, Asian Games 4x400m relay gold-winning quarter-miler VK Vismaya has been handed two-year suspension by the NADA’s Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel, nearly two years after she tested positive for a banned substance.
Vismaya, who was a part of the Indian women’s quartet that won gold in 4x400m relay in the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games, was provisionally suspended by the National Anti-Doping Agency in 2024 after her urine sample was found to contain Clomiphene which comes under the hormone and metabolic modulators category and which is prohibited at all times.
Her sample was collected at her home at Perumbavur, near Kochi, in an out-of-competition test on August 15, 2024 and the NADA had informed the athlete about her dope flunk the following month.
She had later claimed that she had submitted Therapeutic Use Exemption during dope sample collection.
Clomiphene is a non-steroidal medication used clinically to induce ovulation in women, and the 29-year-old Vismaya said she had taken it as a fertility drug. She had said she was prescribed the medication by her doctor for a “legitimate medical purpose pregnancy treatment” and it had nothing to do with her performance.
But the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel in an order passed last month handed her two-month ban effective from October 29, 2024, meaning she will complete her ban period in six months. The ADDP decision was published by the NADA only recently.
Meanwhile, sprinter N Shanmuga Srinivas has been handed four-year ban by the ADDP from February 6, 2025 for “Evading, Refusing or Failing to Submit to Sample Collection”.
Srinivas is reportedly one of the two athletes who were helped by the former junior national athletics coach N Ramesh to evade dope tests at the SAI Hyderabad Centre.
Ramesh was initially handed provisional suspension. But, the Anti-Doping Appeal Panel of the NADA lifted the suspension on him last month.
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