India’s fastest junior quarter-miler Sai Sangeetha provisionally suspended

Sai Sangeetha Dodla, the country’s fastest junior quarter-miler this year, has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for a banned substance.

The Telangana athlete, who clocked a personal best of 55.13 seconds to win the U20 Federation Cup in Lucknow in March, is on the National Anti-Doping Agency’s list (as of May 31, 2024) of athletes currently under provisional suspension. The NADA list does not mention the date of the test, but states that she tested positive for stanozolol metabolites.

Sangeetha was part of the Indian team that won gold in the 4x400m relay at the U20 Asian Championships in Dubai in April – a gold medal that could now be in jeopardy.

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In March, she had also won the U20 title at the 400m National Open in Thiruvananthapuram with a time of 55.30 seconds, but surprisingly did not come close to that time at the U20 Asians a month later, finishing seventh with 57.26 seconds in the individual quarter-mile race.

Also on NADA’s new list of provisionally suspended athletes are Jeyavindhiya Jegadish from Tamil Nadu, who finished sixth in the 400-meter hurdles at the U20 Asian Championships (the substance is the drostanolone metabolite), and Durga Singh from Bihar, who won the girls’ 1500-meter race at the Khelo India Youth Games in Chennai earlier this year.

Meanwhile, 20-year-old sprinter V. Neha from Kerala, who was on NADA’s April 2024 list of provisionally suspended athletes, has now been banned for four years (starting from December 6, 2023) as per the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Committee (ADDP)/Anti-Doping Appeals Committee’s list of sanctioned athletes. The 20-year-old won silver in the 100m and 200m at the Junior Nationals in Coimbatore late last year.