Pinki was one of the bright spots

New Delhi: Indian athletics made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2006 with the sport’s governing body in the country having to answer uncomfortable questions on more than one occasion.

The dope scandal involving discus thrower Neelam Jaswant Singh was carried forward from last year with a similar reported offence by Seema Antil being hushed up by the Athletics Federation of India.

To pile on the misery, the gender controversy over middle distance runner Santhi Soundarajan showed the federation in poor light once again.

Results on the field were not too encouraging either.

The only gold at a major event came courtesy the 4x400m women’s relay at the Asian Games, when the quartet of Sathi Geetha, Manjeet Kaur, Chitra and Pinki Pramanik claimed the yellow metal for India.

Otherwise, the haul of one gold, four silver and four bronze medals was a big drop from the level achieved in Busan in 2002, when Indian athletes came home with seven gold medals.

The Indians did not set the competitions ablaze at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games either, claiming a total of just two silver and one bronze medal.

Long jumper Anju Bobby George, who had won the silver medal in the 2005 World Athletics finals, failed to capture last year’s form as well as Indian hearts. The lanky Keralite, who had finished 2005 ranked as high as No. 4 in the IAAF charts, suffered a free fall and was last spotted at No. 23. She was ranked 35th before the Doha Games.

Anju could not get close to her personal best mark of 6.83m achieved at the 2004 Athens Olympics, despite claiming on more than one occasion that she had the seven-metre barrier within her sights.

In fact, she did not manage to get past the mid 6.5s throughout the year and, as a result, the likes of Japan’s Kumiko Ikeda and Kazakhstan’s Olga Rypakova left her behind at different meets during the year.

In the regional sphere, India were given a run for their money at South Asian Games in Colombo by the hosts, who bagged as many as 14 out of the 35 gold medals on offer in the track and field events. India fared only slightly better with 15 despite the standard of competition nothing much to write home about.

The lacklustre results did not deter the federation from sending bloated contingents to major events, most of which came back empty-handed.

But there were some bright spots too. Pramanik captured five gold medals in the Asian Grand Prix circuit in May, including the 400-800m double in Bangalore and Pune.

Vikas Gowda won the discus throw event at the NCAA Track and Field championship in Sacramento, California.

Off the field, the sport was rocked repeatedly by various scandals despite repeated assertions by AFI that they were taking steps to ensure that the country was not embarrassed at the international stage.

The dope scandal involving Neelam Jaswant Singh came to light during last year’s World Athletics Championship in Helsinki and the four-member AFI panel headed by Walter Davaram took seven months to arrive at a decision.

They first exonerated the athlete, but later, “in view of more facts coming to light,” found her guilty, thus confirming the two-year provisional ban slapped on Neelam by the IAAF.

AFI secretary general Lalit Bhanot said more than once that the federation had informed the athletes about the dope threat and told them about the supplements and medication they can take and what they cannot.

But all that effort, if there was any, came to naught when the dope menace came back to haunt India in the form of Seema Antil.

The Melbourne Commonwealth Games silver medallist has had a dope history with her gold medal at the 2000 World Junior Championship being taken back after she was found to have taken a banned substance.

This time around, she was sent home from a pre-Asian Games preparatory camp in Muscat after she tested positive in an out-of-competition check.

True to its traditions, the AFI neither confirmed nor denied the report, but in a strange twist a few days later, announced that an expert panel had examined the charges on a fast-track basis and found Seema not guilty.

One wondered when the panel was formed and how it reached a conclusion within three days, especially in the light of the fact that the panel hearing Neelam’s case took seven months. (PTI)