India loses Paris quota after boxer Parveen suspended by doping agency
New Delhi, May 17
In an unprecedented embarrassment for Indian boxing, the country will fight afresh for qualification in the women’s 57kg category after being forced to surrender the quota owing to holder Parveen Hooda’s international suspension for three whereabout failures in 12 months.
Hooda was handed a 22-month suspension by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) today. The 2022 World Championships bronze medallist, who fetched the Olympics quota with an Asian Games bronze last year, failed to file her whereabouts in the period from April 2022 to March 2023 as per the WADA rules.
“Parveen Hooda has been suspended for 22 months by the International Testing Agency (ITA) for Whereabouts Failures,” the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) said in a media release.
However, after discussion with the concerned agencies, Parveen’s sanction has been backdated and she has to now serve a 14-month suspension starting today.
The development means Parveen will not be able to compete at the Paris Games in July-August this year. In boxing, a quota is awarded to the country and not the athlete. This leaves only three Indian boxers — Nikhat Zareen (50kg), Preeti (54kg) and Lovlina Borgohain (75kg) — in the Olympics-bound group for now. With the final Olympics qualifier scheduled to begin on May 24 in Bangkok, India will have another chance to qualify in the 57kg category. But the country can only field reserves who were registered by April 11. “….which means that only two boxers, named as reserves in 60kg and 66 kg category, are eligible to compete in Bangkok,” the BFI stated.
It is likely that 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Jaismine Lamboriya will now fight for the slot as she was listed as the reserve for the 60kg event, while Manju Bamboriya was named as the 66kg reserve by the BFI for the final qualifiers.
Whereabouts information (home address, any other location, email address and phone number) is used by anti-doping organisations to locate athletes for effective out-of-competition doping control and testing.
It has been learnt that the sanction was a result of negligence on the part of both the federation and Parveen. When an athlete fails to enter their whereabouts, the federation is also notified so that it pushes the athlete to fill up the details on time.
“The High Performance Director, the federation and Parveen, all three were aware about the situation but none of them took action,” said a source privy to the development.
“No one took responsibility thinking the other will do something about it. Otherwise how will such a thing happen, it has never happened before,” he added.
In October last year, it had come to light that Parveen had committed multiple whereabout failures in a one-year period and had received a notice from the ITA, which is overseeing the anti-doping programme for boxing at the Olympics.
