IND Race Walker Bhawna Jat Receives 16-Month Ban For Whereabouts Failure By NADA Panel

Bhawna Jat, former national record holder in the women's 20km race walk, has been handed a 16-month suspension by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). The ban follows her violation of whereabouts requirements, an offence she committed in August last year. (More Sports News)

Jat, who had been provisionally suspended in August 2023, was recalled from Budapest, where she had travelled to compete in the 2023 World Athletics Championships. The 28-year-old athlete had missed two doping tests in May and June 2023 and had previously been warned of a filing failure in late 2022.

The ADDP's decision to suspend Jat was delivered on 10th July 2024, under Article 2.4 of the NADA Rules, which addresses whereabouts failures. According to this rule, any combination of three missed tests or filing failures within a 12-month period by an athlete in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) constitutes a whereabouts violation.

Jat's suspension is effective from 10th August 2023, coinciding with the date of her provisional suspension, and will conclude on 10th December 2024.

Expressing her disappointment, Jat attributed her failure to comply with NADA's whereabouts requirements to technical issues with the mobile application used for updating her location and the subsequent loss of her phone. "I don't know how this happened. I had gone somewhere. I could not receive the OTP on the (mobile) application and later I lost my phone as well. This is why I couldn't update my whereabouts," she told PTI, stressing that the violation was not intentional.

Jat had previously represented India at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and clinched gold in the 20km race-walk event at the National Inter-State Championships in June 2023.

Under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules, a combination of whereabouts failures within a 12-month period constitutes an anti-doping rule violation, with the standard sanction being a two-year suspension. However, this can be reduced to a minimum of one year, depending on the athlete's degree of fault.

Athletes in the RTP are required to provide detailed information about their daily whereabouts, including their overnight location, training venues, work locations, and other scheduled activities. They must also designate a 60-minute window each day during which they are available for testing. Non-compliance with these obligations results in a whereabouts failure, which can lead to significant penalties.