No hope with dope
The half-hearted approach towards stamping out the doping menace has time and again brought shame to India in the world sporting arena, says
M.S. Unnikrishnan
Indian athletes have been on a "high" for quite some time and they continue to persist with their "high-spirited performances" due to the ham-handed attitude of the authorities in stamping out the menace of doping. "Everyone else is doing and why can’t we" is the reasoning of senior officials in the Sports Authority of India (SAI) — the nodal agency created to foster sports in the country.




Sanamacha Chanu from Manipur tested positive for diuretic furosemide at the Athens Olympics in 2004

Global shame Ivninderpal Singh THE quest for better athletics through chemicals goes back a long time. With the aim to excel, sportspersons adopt the wrong path by consuming performance-enhancing drugs. This illegal way of "performing at its peak" was witnessed even during Ancient Olympics. The first recorded attempt to enhance performance occurred in 8th century BC, when Ancient Greek Olympians ate sheep’s testicles. Another form of drugs use is blood doping, either by blood transfusion or using the hormone erythropoietin (EPO). Players boost the number of red blood corpuscles (RBCs) in the circulation to enhance athletic performance. Olympic and world 100m champion Justin Gatlin of the US failed a drug test in July 2006

Adventure in the desert
Magan Bissa from Bikaner in Rajasthan is a well-known adventurer and has been doing mountaineering and parasailing. He mastered the basics of snow skiing and water skiing at Indian Institute of Skiing and Mountaineering, Gulmarg, in 1983 and learnt skydiving from the Indian Sky Diving Federation, Agra, in 1982.