What NADA Should Have Done Differently: Lessons from the Narsingh Yadav Case

Update: this paper was published before WADA appealed the NADA panel’s decision. The decision did not survive the appeal, as our analysis anticipated. On 18 August 2016 the CAS Ad Hoc Division at the Rio Olympics overturned it and imposed a four-year period of ineligibility, finding no evidence to support the claim that his food had been spiked.

In the weeks before the 2016 Rio Olympics, Narsingh Yadav, a medal prospect in the 74kg freestyle wrestling category, tested positive for metandienone, an anabolic steroid. On 1 August 2016 a NADA hearing panel cleared him, accepting his case that he was the victim of a conspiracy. Aahna Mehrotra, founder of AM Sports Law & Management Co., examined the decision against the WADA Code and identified the gaps in the process NADA followed.

The facts as reported

Narsingh was tested on 2 June, 25 June and 5 July 2016, and the second and third samples were positive. He said that someone had tried to contaminate his food on 5 June, which his team threw away without reporting the incident to SAI or the Wrestling Federation of India. He trained in Bulgaria from 5 to 22 June and then in Sonepat, where he said he had left his water bottle unattended on 23 and 24 June. He filed a police complaint on 26 July, his supplements tested negative on 27 July, and the panel heard the case on 27 and 28 July.

Questions the decision left open

• The result of the 2 June sample was not addressed. Metandienone can be detected for four to six weeks, so that result would show whether the substance was present before the alleged spiking.
• Under Article 2.1.1 each athlete is strictly responsible for any prohibited substance found in their sample, with fault relevant only to the sanction. An athlete who had already faced an attempt at sabotage and had been warned to take care was expected to exercise a higher degree of care, as CAS expected of Maria Sharapova given her experience. Leaving a water bottle unattended across four training sessions over two days is difficult to reconcile with that standard.
• The athlete must establish how the substance entered the body on the balance of probability. In WADA v. ITF and Gasquet (CAS 2009/A/1930), the player proved a specific means of ingestion that he could not have anticipated. Here the panel had suspicion but little supporting evidence.
• The levels of metandienone across the two positive samples could have helped show when the substance was taken, and should have been examined.
• The police complaint was filed only after the positive results, more than seven weeks after the incident it described.

What the Code allowed

A sanction can be eliminated only where there is No Fault or Negligence (Article 10.4). Reductions for No Significant Fault under Article 10.5.1 apply to specified substances and contaminated products. Metandienone, an anabolic agent, is not a specified substance, and the negative supplement tests ruled out a contaminated product. Even treating the case as unintentional, which is plausible given that a wrestler would not take a weight-gaining substance shortly before cutting weight, the standard sanction was two years, reducible by at most half. On the evidence, a ban of one to two years was the likely outcome.

Why it matters

Accepting a sabotage defence without strong evidence sets a precedent that is easy to exploit. The anti-doping system depends on athletes discharging the burden the Code places on them, and on hearing panels holding them to it.