WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) Ephraim Ser­rette said dope test­ing is a must at all his ad­min­is­tra­tion's events.

He was speak­ing fol­low­ing a re­port by the World An­ti Dop­ing Agency Com­mis­sion which ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of dop­ing, cov­er ups and ex­tor­tion in Russ­ian ath­let­ics that al­so im­pli­cat­ed the world gov­ern­ing body for ath­let­ics- the IAAF.

The com­mis­sion is al­so call­ing for Rus­sia to be banned from ath­let­ic com­pe­ti­tion while five of its coach­es and ath­letes to be hand­ed life­time bans.The re­port which shocked world ath­let­ics yes­ter­day al­so iden­ti­fied 'sys­temic fail­ures' in the IAAF that it said pre­vent­ed an 'ef­fec­tive' an­ti-dop­ing pro­gramme.

But when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Ser­rette said he did not want to com­ment on the is­sue be­cause of the world im­pli­ca­tions. How­ev­er he made it clear his ad­min­is­tra­tion does not make joke where drug test­ing is con­cerned. He ex­plained that the NAAAs spends a lot of mon­ey on test­ing each year.

That amount, the Guardian un­der­stands is in the re­gion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$50, 000 spent on drug test­ing every year. Sec­re­tary of the ad­min­is­tra­tion Al­lan Ba­boolal in giv­ing a break down of the monies spent by the NAAAs an­nu­al­ly, ex­plained that there is a cost of US$950 for a kit which com­pris­es of two vials (A and B); there is al­so a cost to do the test­ing which is un­known as well as a cost to send the test back to be ex­am­ined.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion se­lects ath­letes at ram­don and these ath­letes are be­tween six to 10 for each cham­pi­onship. The Meets at which drug test­ing is done in T&T are the Se­nior and Ju­nior Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship and the Carif­ta Tri­als. To date on­ly two ath­letes from T&T were found guilty from the NAAAs drug test­ing- the first was caught at the 2006/2007 ju­nior cham­pi­onship and the an­oth­er at the 2011 se­nior cham­pi­onship.

Ser­rette said the ath­letes were im­me­di­ate­ly sanc­tioned by the world gov­ern­ing body when they were caught. The NAAAs boss claimed that his ad­min­is­tra­tion do not take ac­tion against peo­ple caught on drugs but in­stead are guid­ed by the penal­ties of the world gov­ern­ing body.

Sprint­er Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste, who claimed a bronze medal at the World Cham­pi­onship Games in Daegu, South Ko­rea, in 2011, test­ed pos­i­tive for a banned sub­stance on­ly a day be­fore she was ex­pect­ed to com­pete in the Women's 100 me­tres in Moscow. DShe has since served a two year sus­pen­sion.

Se­moy Hack­ett, al­so served a retroac­tive six-month ban by the In­ter­na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tion (IAAF) for her use of Methyl­hexa­neamine in March in 2012 and again for the same drug in No­vem­ber of the same year while rep­re­sent­ing her school Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty (LSU) at the Na­tion­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NCAA) Di­vi­sion 1 Out­door Cham­pi­onship.