National anti-doping body serves whereabouts failure notice to Vinesh Phogat

The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) today served a notice to wrestler-turned-politician Vinesh Phogat for whereabouts failure and sought an explanation within 14 days. Vinesh had announced her retirement after her disqualification from the Paris Olympics in August, saying she doesn’t have the strength to continue. The 29-year-old, who was disqualified for being 100gm overweight ahead of her 50kg category gold medal bout, had announced her decision on social media.

All the athletes registered with NADA’s Registered Testing Pool (RTP), of which Vinesh is a part, are required to provide details about their availability for dope tests.

If they fill the details and are not found available on that location at that given time, it is considered a whereabouts failure.

The NADA, in its notice, conveyed to the Vinesh that she had apparently committed a whereabouts failure as she was not available for a dope test on September 9 at her house at Kharkhoda village in Sonepat.

Vinesh and fellow wrestler Bajrang Punia joined the Congress party recently and she is contesting the upcoming Haryana Assembly election from Julana constituency. She has been busy campaigning in the Julana constituency.

“You are hereby given a formal notice to notify you about apparent failure to comply with the whereabouts requirements of the ADR, and to invite you to make any comments before we come to a final decision on the matter,” the NADA notice read.

Vinesh needs to either accept the failure or provide evidence that she was present in that location for about 60 minutes. It may be mentioned that one whereabouts failure does not constitute an anti-doping rule violation. There must be three whereabouts failures (whether filing failures or missed tests) within a 12-month period for NADA to charge an athlete.