India’s sports minister on Tuesday sacked the Ukrainian coach of the country’s top female 400m runners after six of them tested positive for banned steroids in a major doping scandal. “I have asked for his removal. He has already been removed,” Ajay Maken told a news conference in New Delhi, referring to Yuri Ogrodnik, who coached three of the six to gold medals at the Commonwealth and Asian Games last year.
Late Monday, one of India’s brightest female track stars, Ashwini Akkunji, joined her 4x400m relay team-mates Sini Jose and Mandeep Kaur in failing a drugs test because of traces of a banned anabolic steroid in her urine. Akkunji, Jose and Kaur were part of India’s Commonwealth and Asian Games-winning team in New Delhi and Guangzhou, China, last year. Akkunji also took the 400m hurdles Asiad title in a personal best time.
The trio are among eight athletes — six female 400m runners, a female shotputter and a male long-jumper — who have now failed drugs tests, casting a cloud over Indian athletics and denting the country’s Olympic ambitions. All have been provisionally suspended pending the testing of their second, or “B”, samples later this week, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) told AFP on Tuesday.
The athletes have all protested their innocence and blamed contaminated food supplements for the results. They have also claimed that there were not enough doctors to advise them on which supplements to take. “I’m innocent and I’ll prove it. I won’t let all my years of sweat and blood be tainted,” Akkunji was quoted as saying by the Asian Age newspaper.
Ogrodnik also said he was innocent, claiming he had asked his athletes to “buy only food supplements and not steroids”.