Sports

Neeraj’s historic performance continues, Indians dominate Commonwealth Games, but doping embarrasses them

Javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, who became the ‘poster boy’ of Indian athletics after winning the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, inspired the likes of Avinash Sable and Murali Sreeshankar by continuing his strong performances this year but during this period the sting of doping has affected the country. Did not stop embarrassing. In the year 2022, at least six top Indian athletes were caught using banned drugs. During the preparations for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, such cases caused the country a lot of embarrassment in the international sports world.

Long jumper veteran and senior vice-president of the Athletics Federation of India Anju Bobby George has created a sensation by saying that athletes who train abroad bring banned drugs from there to distribute among some of their colleagues. Neeraj won a silver medal at the World Championships in the US, becoming the second Indian after Anju to do so. Anju won a bronze medal in the 2003 Paris World Championship. He became the first Indian to win the Diamond League Champion’s Finals in September. However, he could not defend his Commonwealth Games gold medal due to injury.

However, he fell a little short of his target of covering a distance of 90 metres. His best performance this year was 89.94m. In the Stockholm leg of the Diamond League, he finished second over this distance. Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem produced a stunning throw of 90.18m to win the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, pipping world champion Anderson Peters. Steeplechase player Sable and long jumper Sreesankar led the Indian challenge at the Commonwealth Games in Neeraj’s absence. In the presence of world class athletes, they achieved a historic feat by winning silver medals in their respective events.

Sreesankar narrowly missed out on gold while Sable ended Kenya’s dominance in the 3000m steeplechase event. Kenyans had won all three men’s medals every time since the 1998 Commonwealth Games. The most notable result was the first and second place finishes in the men’s triple jump by Eldoz Paul and Abdullah Abubakar. This gave India its second best performance in athletics since the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games with one gold, four silver and three bronze.

High jumper Tejaswin Shankar, who made it to the Indian Commonwealth team following a Delhi High Court order, also won a bronze. Other medalists included Anu Rani (bronze in women’s javelin throw), Priyanka Goswami (silver in women’s 10,000m) and Sandeep Kumar (bronze in men’s 10,000m). India also won three medals in the Under-20 World Championships in Colombia, with Roopal Chowdhary, a farmer’s daughter from Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district, winning two medals.

Kamalpreet Kaur, who finished sixth in discus throw at the Tokyo Games, has been banned for three years by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for doping. Olympic javelin thrower Shivpal Singh also tested positive for the steroid metandienone. He was banned for four years. Just ahead of the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games, top sprinters Sekar Dhanalakshmi and Aishwarya Babu were found to be dope positive, embarrassing the country.

400m sprinter MV Jilna was earlier included in the Commonwealth team but was later withdrawn after testing positive for a banned drug. Arjuna Award winning veteran sprinter MR Poovamma was also found guilty of doping. NADA’s Anti-Doping Appeal Panel banned him for two years last year after testing positive for ‘Methylhexaneamine’. Discus thrower Navjeet Kaur Dhillon was the latest top athlete to be implicated in doping. Some legends of athletics like Praveen Sobti, who played the role of Bhima in the TV serial ‘Mahabharat’ and medalist of Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, passed away last year. India’s ‘Golden Girl’ PT Usha was recently elected unopposed as the President of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). She is the first woman President of IOA.

People News Chronicle

People News Chronicle author account is for interns, who are just new to our news agency. They are taught basics of wordpress and publishing through this account.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button