‘Coaches of positive testing sports stars will also be punished’

Ravi Ladduwahetty

Coaches of sportsmen and sportswomen, charged with taking drugs will also be punished from now on under the prevailing laws, National Anti Doping Organization (NADO) Chairman Dr Geethanjana Mendis told the Daily News yesterday.

Dr Mendis’s remarks to this newspaper comes in the wake of not only three Sri Lanka rugby players- Prop Forward Eranga Swarnatilleke, Fullback Saliya Kumara and No 8 Forward Keith Gurusinghe being tested positive for drugs during Sri Lanka’s encounters against United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong in the recently concluded International Rugby Board (IRB) tournament in Colombo but other related incidents of other Sri Lankan sportsmen at international levels as well.

The other most recent occurrence of doping charges came when Sri Lanka opening batsman Upul Tharanga was tested positive at the 2011 World Cup while Weightlifter Chinthaka Geethal Withanage who was tested positive at the Asian Weightlifting Championships in China a fortnight ago.

Boxer Manjula Wanniarachchi was also tested positive and was stripped off a Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in New Delhi on the same charges.

Dr Mendis said that the National Anti Doping Organization (NADO) which is the Sri Lankan arm of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) was fully empowered to take action against not only against these sportsmen but their respective coaches as well and said that the laws would be implemented to the letter and in spirit in order to combat this growing menace.

He also said that the coaches were expected to be aware of the medicines that their players and charges were expected to take and if they have not been kept informed or if they plead ignorance, they also ought to be punished, he said.

All these problems have occurred, Dr Mendis said, was due to the players deviating from the tradition and the compulsion of drawing all their medicines from the Institute of Sports Medicine and not keeping their coaches informed.

This is indeed a very sad situation where such a large number of allegations have been made against these Sri Lankan sportsmen and especially at the international level bringing shame to the country and we have to put an end to this disgrace, Dr Mendis said. He said that the inquiries were going on with regard to the investigations but refused to comment on the allegations against Upul Tharanga on the basis that the International Cricket Council insisting on utmost confidentiality on the matter.

We will be filing the report to the ICC soon, he said.

However, in the case of Chinthaka Withanage, he said that the preliminary inquiry was already completed and NADO was awaiting the observations of the Sri Lanka Weightlifting Federation which had to be submitted to the International Weightlifting Federation well ahead of the June 23 deadline.

In his case, he was supposed to consult the Kurunegala based Doctor of the Sports Ministry Medical Unit but has not even kept him informed of what he was doing, Dr Mendis said in disdain.

Meanwhile, the inquiry on the conduct of the three Sri Lanka rugby players will begin tomorrow and the findings will be made known within the course of the week.

“We are now trying to determine the sources from where these players obtained these drugs,” Dr Mendis remarked.