More than 20 athletes from various sports have returned positive for banned drugs in tests conducted during the National Games in Goa in Octo🍬ber-November in one of the biggest heaps of doping cases in the country.
Most of the 20-odd dope offenders have been handed provisional suspension by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), which had collected dope samples from the participants in✃ the October 25 to November 9 multi-sport event.
Many have won medals in🌞 the Games while there were a few international player﷽s.
There were nine trac♔k and field athletes and seven weightlifters among the dope offenders, according to sources.
The most prominent of the seven weightlifters who failed dope tests was Vandana Gupta, a double ꦉbronze-medal winner in the Common🐭wealth Championships.
"Yes, seven weightlifters have fa💜iled dope tests durin♌g the Goa National Games and there could be more in the coming days," a source from the Indian Weightlifting Federation told PTI.
The 29ꦅ-year-old Vandana, from Uttar Pradesh, had won gold in the women's 76kg category in Goa with a total lift of 207𒀰kg.
She is a bronze-medal winner in 63kg category in both the 2013 and 2017 Commonwealth Championships, besides finishing fourth in 63kg class in the 2014 Commonwealth 🐻Games in Glasgow.
Cyclist Anita Devi was handed provisional suspension by the NADA on December 6 after her urine sample collected on November 3 was found 🦋to contain banned drug 19-Norandrosterone, an anabolic androgenic steroid.
Devi was a member of the women💎's 4km pursuit team from Manipur that won the gold medal.
The Goa National Games were held after a seven-year delay due to issues related to building of in🦂frastructure and a huge number of dope offenders has now come out from the multi-sport event.
The 2015 Natඣionalꦰ Games in Kerala had seen 16 dope positive cases while the count in the 2022 edition in Gujarat was 10.
