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Indian race walker Bhawna Jat received a 16-month anti-doping sanction from the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) for failing to comply with whereabouts requirements. The ban, effective from her initial suspension on August 10, 2023, will conclude on December 10, 2024.
Indian race walker Bhawna handed 16-month ban
Although the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) made the decision in July 2024, it was only officially announced on their website on Thursday. This suspension, stemming from a whereabouts failure in August 2023, prevented Jat from competing at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
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Every year, NADA selects a group of Indian athletes competing at the highest level in their respective sports to be included in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP), which is reviewed quarterly.
All athletes listed in the RTP are required to submit their whereabouts information quarterly, including details such as their addresses for accommodations, training locations, work, competitions, and other pertinent information. Failure to provide this information is considered a filing failure.
Adding to the requirements, these athletes must also inform NADA of a one-hour window within which they'll be available for testing. Missing this notification could lead to a "missed test" according to Olympics.com.
Under Article 2.4, "Any combination of three (3) missed tests and/or filing failures, as defined in the International Standard for Results Management, within a twelve (12) month period by an Athlete in a Registered Testing Pool" constitutes 'Whereabouts Failures' by an athlete.
Unfortunately, 28-year-old Bhawna Jat, a Tokyo Olympian and former national record holder in the women's 20km race walk, failed to comply on multiple occasions. She missed two doping tests scheduled for May and June 2023 and additionally had a filing failure for her whereabouts information in the last quarter of 2022.
Bhawna attributed her filing failure to technical difficulties she encountered while attempting to complete the form using a mobile application. She also mentioned that losing her phone had added to the complications.
She had earlier told PTI that her whereabouts failure was not on purpose.
"I don't know how this happened. I had gone somewhere. I was not able to receive the OTP on the (mobile) application and later I lost my phone as well. This is the reason I wasn't able to update my whereabouts," she had said.
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