Government apprehensive as Mudgal report nails dope-tainted coach Yuri Ogorodnik

Even as the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has received the approval from the Sports Ministry regarding the recall of dope-tainted coach Yuri Ogorodnik, doubts have arisen over the claims by authorities that the Ukrainian was exonerated by every panel concerned in the 2011 doping scandal.

Ogorodnik was shunted out of the country when six of India's top women quarter-milers training under him tested positive in 2011. Three of them had figured in the gold-medal winning relay teams in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.

After its earlier reservations to hire Ogorodnik, the ministry had agreed to the demands of the AFI.

The AFI has time and again insisted that nothing was found against Ogorodnik by any of the committees that looked into the doping scam of six athletes, including Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose who were each handed two-year for failing dope tests.

In fact, the federation has been claiming that India has the best chance of winning a medal in the women's 4x400m relay at next year's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro if Ogorodnik could be made available to train the team.

Surprisingly, the ministry and the SAI seem to have accepted the AFI's contention and not gone into the preliminary report of the Justice Mukul Mudgal committee that went into the doping episode. The Mudgal report did raise enough doubts about the coach's role for the ministry at least to be wary of his recall.

The Mudgal report has mentioned three documents recovered from the coach's room.

"The first was a document containing instructions for the consumption of food supplements and bearing the date 18.05-28.05. The point 3 of the said document has 'Testosteron 5%' written on it. The second document containing a tabular chart, presumably a food supplement chart with the names of the supplements written on it. It has the words '2002 Asian Busan' inscribed on the upper right corner. One of the food supplements mentioned on the left hand side is marked simply as 'White Tablet'," Mudgal stated in his report.

The third document included the usage of Ginseng Kianpi, the supplement that was eventually found to have been contaminated with the banned steroids, methandienone and stanozolol.

Ogorodnik, the report said, disowned the document that contained reference to testosterone and told the panel that the one which referred to 'white tablet' might have been an old supplements programme. He admitted that the third one, related to use of Ginseng, was prepared by him.

Mudgal was critical of Ogorodnik in his report. "It can be stated that the coach has been negligent in purchasing the supplements? in China as he did not verify whether the content in the supplements had banned substances," the report stated.

Mudgal noted that a general "research on Ginseng Kianpi pills would induce doubts on the approval and usage of such supplements as information available suggests that these pills contain banned substances."