Doping scandal: Ashwini Akkunji’s father points finger at Indian coaches

This sleepy village and which had been riding high on the success ever since its daughter Ashwini Shetty Akkunji won double gold in the CWG is now wearing a shroud of sadness following the B sample report that confirmed strains of Anabolic steroids in the blood sample of Ashwini on Monday.

Her father Chidananda Shetty Akkunji told DNA, “My child might have failed the dope test in the B report but I do not think that she had taken drugs and even today after the B report arrived she had called from Delhi and told that she had not done anything wrong that would make my country and my parents be ashamed of. Though she tried to put a brave face I knew right away she was crying.”

“I had been to her training grounds in SAI several times and found out that there were 20 women athletes and not even one lady doctor, the SAI does not even have a qualified sports dietician, I came to know that the athletes were given Rs 450 per day for food and supplements but they were given only food and no supplements saying that there were no stocks in the SAI, but they brought it from outside and gave it but they were not tested nor certified by the officials.”

He said, “This makes be believe that there was a conspiracy against Indian athletes who were poised to win big events in the international sports tournaments. Apart from the athletes who have been tainted now there were about 250 others who have also given samples for dope tests but the NADA officials were not disclosing reports, this means that they were targeting only a few athletes of India who were capable of winning top places in a few chosen events.”

“There was also a group of Indian sport officials who were against foreign coaches, it could be recalled here only few athletes were assigned to foreign coaches, and these athletes including my daughter won Asian Games in China,” he said.

The dope tests carried out in China before and after the events in which Ashwini won were negative, he said, asking what happened after she was assigned to a foreign coach needs to be investigated.

“I definitely feel that a group of Indian sport officials including the Indian coaches were trying to malign the foreign coaches,” he said.

The Mangalore-based Corporation Bank, which has employed her, has held back all its decisions about Ashwini Akkunji,

“We will not take any decision about her in a hasty manner. She will have to appear before a panel formed by the Bank and record her version of the episode. We have also written to the Athletic Federation of India to confirm the status of Ashwini in the Federation after the B report. However, the hoardings depicting her as our brand ambassador has to go for obvious reasons,” told General Manager of the Bank BR Bhat.”