Athletics needs a drug rehab

In a country that lionises its sporting heroes, it’s a disappointment to know that Indian athletics has a poor record, among the world’s worst in fact, on doping violations.

The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of World Athletics, the international governing body of the sport, has just designated India as a country with “extremely high” risk of doping, in the dubious company of Russia and Kenya.

To insiders of the Indian athletics fraternity, the doping phenomenon is not news. Journalists have regularly reported the discovery of used hypodermic needles in great abundance in the toilets of tournament venues. Former athletes like Adille Sumariwalla have frequently raised red flags over it. But the incidence seems to have only grown more rampant.

In fact, Indian athletes now top the list of doping offenders, having surpassed Kenya recently. The AIU’s list of athletes not eligible for competition due to doping violations has 148 Indian names in it. Since 2025, India has been in the top two for receiving Anti-Doping Rule Violations. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) reported that 260 Indian athletes were caught with traces of performance-enhancing drugs in 2024 at a positive sample rate of 3.6%, far higher than for any other country and reminiscent of the State-supported doping programme run by Russia in the 2010s.

This has consequences for Indian sport in general and Indian athletes in particular. With AIU placing the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) in the highest category of doping risk, Indian participants in international competitions will henceforth attract more stringent scrutiny. They will be subject to testing without notice in-competition as well as out-of-competition and their samples will be vetted by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s certified labs.

For a country that is aspiring to host major international events, this downgrade by World Athletics is a setback. India is prepping for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and Asian Games in Japan later this year while harbouring dreams of hosting the Olympic Games in 2036. A poor record on doping will detract from India’s case when it makes its pitch to the International Olympic Committee for the 2036 Games.

Unlike in decades past, doping in Indian sport is no longer an individual phenomenon. It is systemic with coaches incorporating performance enhancing substances and masking agents into their training regimes, sometimes without the knowledge of the athlete. It is not also limited to elite athletes and apex events. It infects junior levels of the sport too.

Universally, the handsome rewards offered for athletic success provide the motive to cheat. In India too, athletes are motivated by the prospect of landing a government job through sports quotas and by the attractive handouts of land, money, and opportunities given to medal winners. It is pointless to blame athletes for being motivated by such rewards but, at the same time, it is necessary to build a robust system that demands adherence to rules of fair play and makes no exceptions for the famous or the popular.

India’s anti-doping administration needs to toughen up and modernise. It needs to hold coaches as well as athletes accountable and take its testing programme down to the lower levels of the sport. Instead of becoming defensive about being shown up by AIU, it needs to welcome this as an opportunity to carry out a thorough cleanup.