The smoking syringe points at Ukraine

Few have dared to speak about it openly for obvious reasons. One of the few people to speak out has been track legend PT Usha. She told this paper that, though doping existed in Indian since 1982, the ‘‘emergence of experts from abroad, particularly Russia and the Ukraine’’ led to the use of drugs becoming ‘‘widespread’’ among Indians.

That the practice is still in vogue is testified to by a leading Indian sprinter who trained in Ukraine with the athletics team for the Asian Games. ‘‘For the Asian Games, the athletes were guided by their coach and an ‘injury expert’ with the team about which steroid to take and everything was done methodically after informing the athletes’’, he said.

‘‘For the Asian Games, we reached Ukraine sometime in July; over the first weekend our coach, an Ukrainian, went to Moscow to buy the stock since he knows a lot of people there. The stocks had to be distributed on time to other Indian athletes who were going to Belarus and Moscow.’’

Incidentally, the sprinter points out that training facilities in Ukraine are not fit for sprinters and jumpers.

‘‘There isn’t even a proper track there so I don’t know why are the runners being sent every year. To us, it’s a good change after the boredom at the camps in Bangalore and Patiala.’’ Then adds, as after an afterthought, ‘‘It is also the best place where we can find steroids and do things without anyone knowing it.’’ Problem is, everyone knows about it, no one wants to talk. Hopefully, Mr Salwan’s investigation will put an end to that.