NADA notifies Asian Games runner Abhishek Pal over clomiphene

The National Anti-Doping Agency has issued an adverse analytical finding to distance runner Abhishek Pal after a sample showed clomiphene, a drug used to treat female infertility and listed by WADA as a hormone and metabolic modulator. Pal is on India's 72-member athletics squad for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, entered in the 5,000m and 10,000m. The Games open on 19 September.

PTI sources said on Friday that a banned substance was found in a very small amount and that Pal has not been provisionally suspended. The Tribune reported that the concentration was understood to sit below two nanograms per millilitre, WADA's minimum reporting level, and that Pal has already sent a reply. A person close to him told the paper he will fight the notice because he feels hard done by.

Those two facts can sit together only if NADA explains the reporting decision. WADA's technical documents set floors below which some substances are not to be reported as AAFs. If Pal's B-sample path and the lab packet show a figure under that floor, the case turns on whether the agency applied the floor. If the figure is above it, the floor argument dies.

Clomiphene is not an obscure listing. Indian athletes VK Vismaya and Seema Punia have previously returned findings for the same drug. In men it is sometimes used after steroid cycles to restart natural testosterone, which is why anti-doping manuals treat it as a masking and recovery agent as well as a fertility medicine. Under the Code it is a specified substance in that class, which opens a range of sanctions that starts at a warning in rare fault cases and runs to years when intent is found. One Saturday report called it non-specified and sketched a two-year floor. That point will be settled by the exact WADA class in force on the sample date, not by a headline.

Pal won the 10,000m at the National Inter-State Championships in Bhubaneswar, the qualifying meet, and took silver in the 5,000m. He ran 30:00.06 to win a 10,000m in the Indian Athletics Series in Pune this season and raced the World Cross Country Championships in January. He has also trained in the United States. He won 10,000m bronze at the 2023 Asian Championships.

Without a provisional suspension he remains on the team on paper. Practically, a pending AAF this close to a championship usually ends the trip unless NADA closes the file in his favour in days. He is expected to ask for a fast inquiry. The agency has not issued a public note of its own.

The information gain here is the reporting-level claim. If NADA published AAFs below 2 ng/mL, every athlete on the Asian Games list has a new reason to ask how the lab packet was read. If the Tribune's figure is wrong, Pal's reply will have to stand on contamination or medical use instead. Either way, the next document that matters is NADA's, not another unnamed source.