Staring at uncertain future, Dutee says she is ready for another fight

On Wednesday, it emerged that the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) had provisionally suspended the trailblazing sprinter for failing a drugs test. Dutee is staring at a long suspension, which she fears could unceremoniously end her career. According to Dutee, she was at a school on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar as a chief guest for a sports day event when she got a call from a reporter, seeking reaction to her suspension.

“That’s when I got to know about it,” the 100m and 200m sprinter says. “He mentioned some documents were doing rounds on social media. I requested him to share a copy of it. I saw there was my home address on it and something related to doping. But I couldn’t spot anyone’s signature on it and I personally hadn’t received any such thing. So, I thought it was fake news.”

Dutee claims she then made three calls. The first was to the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) office. “They hadn’t received any documents as well. They, too, said the news could be fake,” she says.

Then, she called the post office in Jajpur, her village. “They received a post with my name on it a few days ago. I don’t know what it is but maybe today (Thursday), I’ll travel around 100km one way to go and collect it.”

And lastly, she consulted her lawyers. “They’ve asked me not to worry.”

Dutee is staring at a long suspension, which she fears could unceremoniously end her career. (Express photo)

Dutee is calm and the smile never leaves her face as she sips lukewarm coffee on a muggy morning in Patia, in the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. She’s at her apartment, organising all the documents she may need to ‘prove her innocence’.

For nearly the last 15 months, Dutee says she’s been suffering from a ‘very painful’ groin injury. “The doctors prescribed me pain killers and I have been on them for quite some time now,” she says, listing out the names of nearly half-a-dozen pills she’s had to consume just to get in shape to run.

The injury, she adds, impacted her performances all through 2022. “I took part in just one competition after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Then, at the Khelo India (Games), I lost in the 200m race and in the 100m, I ran 11.63 seconds. At the inter-state in Chennai, my timing was 11.43 seconds, at Inter University, 11.68 seconds, at CWG, I clocked 11.55 seconds…” she says. “Even right now, I am in pain.”

In spite of the pain, she continued running with the hope of making the cut for this year’s Asian Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics, which she says would be her last outing.

Dutee says she was tested 10 times in the year 2022. In December, she adds, the doping control officers came twice at her home for surprise tests, once on December 5 and again on 26th. According to the official NADA document, Dutee tested positive for her urine sample collected on December 5.

She shows her anti-doping form, in which the medicines and supplements she had been on at the time of sample collection have been listed.

According to NADA, Dutee’s sample returned positive for Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMS), a prohibited substance. SARMS, according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) are a ‘class of therapeutic compounds that have similar anabolic properties to anabolic steroids, but with reduced androgenic (producing male characteristics) properties.’ They can be ‘misused for performance enhancement in sport’ due to their properties that can lead to bone and muscle growth.

Dutee is unaware of the substance. “In all dope files, I have mentioned that I am suffering from pain and been on painkillers. So my first aim is to find out what caused the positive test, if at all it is positive.”

She’ll get her ‘B’ sample tested, which often is a mere legal formality but Dutee wants to tick that box just to rule out the possibility of her ‘A’ sample being tampered or contaminated. “I’ll do what my lawyers tell me,” she says. “My first thought was someone is trying to frame me again. I don’t know who but something like this happened in 2014, where there were questions raised over my gender, accusations were made that I was doping and then I was banned for lifetime because my hormone levels were slightly higher.”

In 2014, when she had just sprung into the limelight, Dutee’s career had hit a roadblock after she was not allowed to take part in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games due to the hyperandrogenism rules, which barred athletes with high male hormones from competing. Dutee dragged the international athletics body to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and won the long-standing battle after it ruled in her favour.

As she stares at an uncertain future once again, Dutee says she derives inspiration from her previous battles to fight the doping case. “This is my last fight,” she says. “My well wishers are telling me, ‘challenge this. You have won bigger battles in the past. You’ll win this one too.”