How not to target a relay medal

There has been a feeling in Indian athletics that if India has to win an athletics medal in the Olympics it would come from the women’s 4x400m relay.  

From the 2010 Commonwealth Games at home when the team won a historic gold that feeling gained further credence. No one cared to remember that it happened to be the weakest field in memory in athletics in the Commonwealth.

Gradually, people at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the Sports Ministry also started believing that a medal was possible in the relay in Olympics.

The hopes were dashed in 2011 when six of the top woman quarter-milers including three of the CWG gold medal-winning team were caught for doping. “Could they have been doping in 2010 also”, people asked. The doubts cropped up but no one really bothered, not least of all the authorities.

After protracted disciplinary proceedings that saw the case go through two panels in India and eventually the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), through an appeal by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the six women were suspended for two years.

Maken sacks Yuriy Ogorodnik

The man at the centre of the doping controversy in 2011 Yuriy Ogorodnik was sacked promptly by the then Sports Minister, Ajay Maken, one of the best sports ministers we have had in recent years.

Maken said he would not spare anyone who was responsible for the scandal.  “It is always the athletes who are punished and the others associated with them are let off scot-free. Athletes are banned and their medals are withdrawn but what of the coaches and the officials,” asked Maken.

Ogorodnik pleaded innocence before the Justice Mukul Mudgal enquiry panel which absolved the athletes saying that the coach had provided the contaminated supplement that led to the positive tests.

When the time came for preparing the relay teams for Rio Olympics, five of the six women involved in the doping episode were back. More significantly, coach Ogorodnik was also back despite much criticism from the media. He was back as the coach of the women and men’s relay quartets that were eyeing a qualification slot for Olympics.
AFI chief Adille Sumariwalla defended the Ukrainian saying the athletes had not blamed him and had admitted that they themselves had bought the supplement. The conclusions of the disciplinary and appeal panels, however, put the blame entirely on the coach. The athletes were given a lenient punishment (later overturned by CAS) only on the argument that they trusted the coach and did not know from where he got the supplement. They thought it was supplied by the AFI to the coach.

Who all were selected as probables

Let’s for a moment forget about the Ukrainian coach. Let’s look at who all were called as probables for Rio. The inclusion of Priyanka Panwar in the team for the World athletics championships at the last moment revealed the plans that the AFI had. Panwar had not competed in a 400m in 2015 when she was included in the team for Beijing. (Panwar is currently serving a provisional suspension for doping having tested positive a second time during the final attempt to make the cut for the relay team.)

Also included in the camp and in the batch to train in Antalya, Turkey, under Ogorodnik in October 2015 were Ashwini Akkunji and Chhavi Sahrawat, both having not competed in 2015. Sahrawat in fact had not competed in a 400m at the national level since 2013 when she had timed her PB of 53.85s.

Sahrawat was dropped from the final list of probables who went to Spala, Poland in May this year. But by mid-2016 the Sports Ministry had released at least Rs 48.69 lakh for her training expenses including Rs 13,53819 from the flagship project Target Olympic Podium (TOP).

Fourteen athletes were included among the probables for the women’s 4x400m relay team. Mandeep Kaur, one of the CWG and Asian Games gold medal winning team member who underwent suspension in 2011, opted out of the camp at some point, and was removed from the TOP scheme, but by then she had incurred an expenditure of Rs 21.82 lakh including Rs 564425 from TOP funding. She did not compete in any meet this year.

Yuriy's batch fails

The fact that no one from “Yuriy’s batch” made the top four in the women’s relay, which eventually managed qualification with a 3:27.88 in Bangalore on July 10, a day before the deadline, said a few things about SAI agreeing to AFI’s proposal for his recall. (The top four were: Nirmala Sheoran, Anilda Thomas, M. R. Poovamma and Tintu Luka. The fifth was 16-year-old Jisna Mathew).

The Ukrainian, it is learnt, wanted both Ashwini Akkunji and Priyanka Panwar in the squad for Rio but was over-ruled by the selection committee. Panwar was bracketed with Kerala’s Anu Raghavan initially when the AFI had planned to have a seven-member team with Tintu Luka also available as she was an 800m entry.

The AFI later realized that Nirmala Sheoran had to be named in the 4x400 as well after having qualified for the individual 400m. That meant just five other members could be chosen for the relay. Anilda Thomas, M. R. Poovamma, Debashree Majumdar, Jisna Mathew and Ashwini were named. Anu went to court against Ashwini’s inclusion since she had better credentials but couldn’t make it in the end.

Why did SAI agree to have so many probables for the women’s 4x400m relay team? It is not that a 4x400 team would be practicing baton exchange for six months or more! Or it is not that talent will suddenly burst out during a trip to Turkey or Poland, no matter that Ogorodnik must have been trying to work his “magic”.

Get selected even when you don’t compete!

Why were athletes picked when they had not even competed? Did SAI raise a question?

SAI surely needs a TEAMS Wing which can assess performances on its own, as it used to do in the past, and keep track of abnormal improvements so that it could advise NADA and get dope tests arranged. If the idea was to have a man like Ogorodnik back in command and allow him freedom to “produce numbers” by way of two relay teams (six members each) such a strategy was fine and would be okay in future too. But the results would be similar to that India achieved in Rio.

Even a man of Ogorodnik’s “touch” cannot get a bunch of women in the range of 53.5-54.5 to run 50.5-51.5. And the coach, according to insiders was planning to get a few of the women run below 51s this season. The best was someone outside the camp, Niramala Sheoran. And the moment she ran an awe-inspiring (by Indian standards) 51.48s in Hyderabad, the best by an Indian since June 2004, several people including this correspondent were convinced she would not be coming anywhere close to it in Olympics, forget about repeating it or bettering it.

Nirmala ran 53.03 to finish sixth in her heat in the individual 400m to bow out in the Rio Games. More importantly she had a split of 53.2 for the opening leg in the 4x400m relay. As for the others, Tintu Luka timed 52.2, Poovamma 52.24 and Anilda Thomas, on the anchor, 51.78.

The SAI or the Ministry should investigate why so many of the woman runners could not come anywhere near their personal bests even after months of training, supported by coaches, recovery expert, masseur etc, at enormous expenditure at home and abroad.

Ashwini who had a 52.82 PB for 400m (2011) had a season best of 53.98 in Bydogoszcz, Poland in June. She was not tried out in a competition closer to the July 11 deadline when others, who were better than her through the season, were asked to run, for example at the last GP meet in Bengaluru.

Jauna Murmu who had a PB of 52.78s (2010) clocked an SB 53.37s in Fed Cup in Delhi in April and despite the best of facilities and Ogorodnik’s attention in Spala, Poland, slumped to 54-plus in subsequent meets finally ending up eighth in Bengaluru in 56.01s, her worst in eight years. Mind you, she has a best of 56.88s for the 400m hurdles clocked while finishing fourth in the Asian Games in Guangzhou in 2010.

If the women at least managed to come 13th overall in Rio in a time of 3:29.53 (seventh in heat), the men fared disastrously. They were disqualified after coming seventh in their heat in 3:02.24.

The focus shifts to men’s team

Even before the men’s team clocked a sensational national record of 3:00.91 in Hyderabad the focus had shifted to it from the women’s relay team. There was talk of it getting India’s first athletics medal since Independence. No one was fooled by the national record in Hyderabad. Could it have been doping? "Faulty timer?" posed Digvijay Singh of the CNN News-18 on Twitter.

The hype with AFI presiden Sumariwalla forecasting a sub-three-minute timing for the men's quartet, was apparently kept up by coach Kunhi Mohammed just before the athletics events started in Rio if a report that appeared on the web is to be believed.

Speaking exclusively to Sportskeeda, Kunhi Mohammed said, “The boys ran 2:56.7 the other day, which is a good timing. If we want to be in the top 5, this is the kind of timing we need to register. It might be the fastest timing, but it will be a bit misleading because the best teams who clock 2:54 have not been running. That being said all the boys are running under 45.3 second splits, which is definitely top 5 worthy. Now they need to translate their training success in the main event.”

That mention about 2:54 was apparently to indicate that the best teams were yet to run this season, which was a fact. But 2:54?!

The US clocked 2:54.29 for the world record in winning the gold at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart. No team has clocked a sub-2:55 in the world since!

The 2:56 that the Indian coach mentioned about his team had run in training? That was not just good enough for a fifth place, but good enough for a medal, possibly good enough for the gold! (The US clocked 2:57.30 in taking the gold in Rio. Jamaica was second in 2:58.16 and the Bahamas third in 2:58.49.)

Only the Bahamas, in winning the London Olympics gold (2:56.72), has a sub-2:57 outside of the US beyond the 1990s. Of the total 13 sub-2:57 marks in history, the US has nine, Britain two, and the Bahamas and Jamaica one each.

It is interesting to see who all had constituted that world-record-breaking US team in 1993: Quincy Watts (PB 44.28, 1993), Andrew Valmon (PB 43.50, 1992, SB 44.13), Butch Reynolds (PB 43.29, 1988, SB 44.13) and Michael Johnson (PB then, also SB 43.65).

 Valmon ran a 44.5 opening leg, Watts had 43.6 on second, Reynolds chipped in with 43.23 and Johnson, who was to set a world record 43.18 in 1999 (bettered by South African Wayde van Neikerk in Rio with 43.03s), anchored in 42.94s!

The Indian men’s splits in Rio were Kunhumohammed 45.9, Muhammed Anas 45.1, A. Dharun 46.55, Arokia Rajiv 44.66. Only Rajiv was world-class; the others have miles to go to reach a level that can promise an Olympic relay medal. Yet, the team, even within the 3:02 range should be able to dominate the Asian scene in the near future. If it can manage 3:00.91 or around it will be unbeatable. All these are conjectures of course at this point.

But what should our coaches be targeting for through fair means in forming a world-class relay team?  Certainly not two runners with sub-46 timings and the other two with sub-47. You need three in the sub-46 range and one in the sub-45 bracket. Not a sub-45 relay leg but a sub-45 one-lapper.

The Bahamas, third in Rio with 2:58.49 had Alonzo Russell (PB 45.25, 2016), Michael Mathieu (PB 45.00, 2015, SB 45.42), Steven Gardiner (PB 44.27, 2015, SB 44.46, nine sub-45 career marks) and 37-year-old former National record holder Chris Brown on the anchor (PB 44.40, 2008, SB 45.56).

It was a mistake

“We made a mistake in bringing back Yuriy,” said an experienced senior coach while we discussed the disaster (barring a few exceptions of course) that Rio turned out to be for Indian athletics.

Mercifully, the Government’s line of thinking, according to sources, was to do away with the services of Ogorodnik as well as a few other East European coaches. They had failed to deliver and it was 'time for them to go' was the feeling.

In line with the Government advisory about avoiding training in countries with a reputation in doping, or in hiring coaches from such countries (that came a little too late for anyone to implement before Rio), the SAI has informed the AFI that in future the latter could look for some other countries than the East European ones. But distance coach Nikolai Snesarev of Belrus seems to have survived the 'SAI cut', going by this report. Since at least 1998 the East Europeans had been dominating our coaches lists.

But the Ministry and SAI would be better off in giving up this theory that our athletes could be susceptible to accidental ingestion of banned substances while training in such dope-tainted countries. The large majority takes banned drugs in order to improve performance; to attain qualification marks, and, if they can avoid detection, to win medals in international competitions. 
The belief that only some junior athletes and some department-level athletes indulge in doping might have also received a setback following the positive tests returned by shot putter Inderjeet Singh and sprinter Darambir Singh, both Olympic qualified athletes. The reported positive test of Priyanka Panwar and a few other cases yet to be brought up should convince everyone, if convincing is required at all, that doping is a big problem in Indian athletics and the authorities have to tackle it on a war-footing.

We can’t pretend that our athletes are turning in world-class performances at home and in places like Erzurum (Turkey), Bydgoszcz, Spala and Almaty, but are unable to come close to those marks while competing in Olympics only because of some miscalculation by coaches about peaking. If we do that once again, as we have been doing in the past, India may have to eventually pay a heavy price. Russian athletes just paid it in Rio.
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(updated: 07-09-2016)