Narsingh Pancham Yadav took drug in tablet form: CAS

Wrestler Narsingh Yadav

New Delhi: While handing down a four-year ban on Narsingh Yadav, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled that the wrestler failed to produce any "real evidence" regarding the sabotage theory and the balance of probabilities was that he orally took the banned substance intentionally in tablet form on more than one occasion.

Wrestler Narsingh Yadav claimed that the doping offence was due to sabotage carried out by mixing his energy drinks with the banned substance on either June 23 or 24. Pic/Ajinkya Sawant

Expert evidence
The ad hoc panel of the CAS relied on expert evidence that Narsingh's dope offence was not due to one-time ingestion of the prohibited substance and its concentration in the first test result (of June 25) was so high that it had to come from an oral ingestion of one or two tablets of methandienone.

An expert opinion was given by Canadian professor Christiane Ayotte, which was presented by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Narsingh's urine sample taken out-of competition on June 25 was found to contain metabolites of methandienone and long-term metabolite of methandienone.

Another sample taken on July 5 was also found to contain long-term metabolites of methandienone. "...all in all found the sabotage (s) theory possible, but not probable and certainly not grounded in any real evidence," the CAS panel said. The CAS had handed Narsingh a four-year ban in its ‘operative award' on August 18.

Narsingh had submitted that the doping offence was due to sabotage carried out by Jithesh (a junior wrestler and member of Sushil Kumar's entourage) by mixing his energy drinks with the substance on either June 23 or 24.
WADA's argument However, WADA argued otherwise.

"According to the expert evidence of Dr Ayotte, methandienone would not completely dissolve in a drink even if it had been ground down, so Narsingh would have seen traces in the drink; the concentrations of methandienone were not consistent with a few micrograms having been ingested as a dispersed powder in a drink taken even the day before, and by the time the second sample of July 5 was taken, the concentration of the drug was too high to be consistent with a one-time ingestion," it said.