Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 12
Discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur has been banned for three years by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for a doping violation.
Punjab’s Kamalpreet, who represented India at the Tokyo Olympics last year, admitted to the violation in a letter to the AIU after which her four-year sanction was reduced by one year.
Her ban will run from March 29, when she was provisionally suspended after her sample showed a presence of the banned steroid stanozolol, till March 2025.
The AIU said that all her results since March 7, when her sample was collected, will be quashed and any award or appearance money received will have to be forfeited.
Interestingly, in her plea during the proceedings, Kamalpreet had blamed the supplements that were provided to her during the national camp for the presence of the banned substance in her sample.
This was after she had refused her right to get her ‘B sample tested. The 26-year-old then got the supplements tested in a private lab in New Delhi, and traces of the steroid were found. The AIU asked her to deposit the samples with the WADA-recognised lab in New Delhi.
The results showed the presence of stanozolol in the protein supplement that Kamalpreet was taking on a regular basis in the weeks leading up to her testing.
However, despite the fact that the samples were tainted, the athlete did not get any sympathies. The AIU’s scientific advisor’s expert opinion was that “the use of the referenced protein supplement — as documented and described by the Athlete — was not compatible with the Adverse Analytical Finding as a matter of pharmacokinetics”.
Pharmacokinetics is the branch of pharmacology concerned with the movement of drugs within the body. The AIU then issued a notice of charge to Kamalpreet, informing her that she faced a four-year ban.
The notice also informed her that she had until September 27 to sign and return an Admission of Anti-Doping Rule Violation and Acceptance of Consequences Form if she wanted to benefit from an automatic one-year reduction. Kamalpreet did exactly that and her ban was reduced to three years.
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