Arshad Nadeem is the only Pakistani under the International Association of Athletics Federations’ strictest doping controls. Aku Partanen tells what it means.
Paris Olympics on channels 26.7.–11.8. Go to the competition website here. You can find the entire program of the games here.
Pakistani Arshad Nadeem the javelin victory is one of the most impressive performances of the Olympic Games in Paris. by Andreas Thorkildsen The 16-year-old Olympic record was improved by 2.40 meters when Nadeem, 27,’s carbon fiber javelin drilled into the Stade de France turf 92.97 meters from the line.
At the same time, it was the longest throw in the history of the entire athletics competition with the current javelin model; Nadeem took that record from the Czech legend From Jan Zeleznywho threw 92.80 at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton.
After the gold medal, the attention in Paris was drawn to more than Nadeem’s technique and armstroke: to the man’s very infrequent competitive pace and his obvious reluctance to travel outside of Pakistan for other than prestigious competitions.
Between the Olympic finals in Tokyo on August 7, 2021 and the Olympic finals in Paris, Nadeem competed a total of ten times, including three times in Pakistan.
Despite this, Nadeem cannot escape from the doping testers.
Firstly, Pakistan has a national anti-doping organization called Adop, which follows the WADA code of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
As Nadeem began to succeed internationally in the early 2020s, he was picked up by the International Association of Athletics Federations’ World Athletics of the highest doping control as an athlete of the category, i.e. testing pool (registered testing pool).
He is the only Pakistani on the long list.
Finns are included Oliver Helander, Wilma Murto, Silja Kosonen, Saga Vanninen and Aku Bearden.
Partanen was put on the list when he finished sixth in the 20-kilometer walk at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. Nadeem took silver in javelin By Neeraj Chopra after.
Such obligations
Partanen explains what kind of obligations the status entails for the athlete:
– For each day, a place to stay and a time window of one hour must be set via the phone application, when the testers must be available. Each day’s regular routines should be reported. If, for example, you train every day from 8 to 11, you must report it.
If the testers search for an athlete three times in vain at the place he/she has declared during the year, it will be interpreted as a doping violation possibly worth a 2-4 year ban.
World Athletics’ anti-doping matters are handled by the independent monitoring unit Athletics Integrity Unit, or AIU. In its name, international test teams around the world move. In addition, Nadeem can be tested by a national operator.
“Believable test deterrent”
– It is typical that where AIU deems it necessary, it handles the testing itself with the help of international teams. This applies, for example, to a large extent to Africa and certainly to Asia as well. I am convinced that Nadeem has been under a very credible test scare for a long time, says the experienced athletics manager Jukka Härkönen.
One of Arshad Nadeem’s few races in the last Olympics was at the Pakistan National Games, a major national, multi-sport championship event. It was organized in May 2023 in the city of Quetta.
Adop testers came to the sceneand the aftermath was blunt. No less than four track and field athletes – sprinters Uzair Rehman, Naseem Akhtar, Arooj Kiran and endurance runner Rabia Ashiq – provided doping samples that showed signs of anabolic steroid use.
Nadeem won the competition with a score of 78.02.
The only Pakistanis
Three athletes were suspended for three and one for four years; the samples were analyzed in a laboratory in Doha, Qatar. These four athletes are the only Pakistani representatives in the AIU by publishing the list of suspended athletics personnel. For example, neighboring India has a massive representation on the list.
AIU does not say the exact number of tests performed on Nadeem in his home country. A very small number of athletes in the testing pool are subjected to 10 doping tests per year, but with competition tests the number is often clearly exceeded.