BHUBANESWAR 17-Jun-2019
The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) today provisionally suspended 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games gold medalist and ace Odisha weightlifter Katulu Ravi Kumar for anti-doping rule violation. Five other weightlifters _ Veerender Singh, Deepika, Vishal Solanki, Seema and Purnima Pandey _ have also tested positive.
The sample of Ravi Kumar was collected during 71st Men and 34th Women Senior National Weightlifting Championship, held in Visakhapatnam earlier this year in February. He had won the gold medal and set a new meet record by lifting a total of 342 kg in the snatch, clean and jerk in the 89-kg event.
However, Ravi Kumar claimed that offence occurred due to a lack of information. “The supplements that we took were legal until January 2019 and the senior nationals were held in February. This was something that we were taking for the past two years.
“I am not part of the national camp and the latest information on what has been placed on the banned list is hard to come by for those of us who are training at home. This was unintentional.
``I have won medals for years without doping allegations. Why would do this now when I am so close to retirement? I just hope we get assistance from the federation. There will be a ban, but I hope it is reduced due to the nature of the offence,” said the Odisha lifter, who is now serving in the Odisha Police as a DSP.
