By Kennedy D’Silva

t a time when the Sports Ministry has been giving due impetus to organising major sports events and increasing the budgetary provisions it also reported some measures it had taken up in the year, important among them being efforts to prevent age frauds, strengthening of anti-doping mechanism and increasing accountability of national federations.

In the recent past, incidents of age fraud committed by athletes, in most major-age-group tournaments including the nationals and also at the selection trials, have come to the notice of the union Government which is considering it as a matter of serious concern. In order to ensure fair play, it is imperative that stringent action is taken against athletes found guilty of committing age fraud, and also against their abettors. The Sports ministry has therefore, decided that all sports federations and associations should take appropriate measures to check age fraud, on the same lines as anti-doping measures, as both amount to cheating, which is a violation of the basic spirit of sport.

The sports ministry recently issued a national code to check age fraud in sports. The National Code against Age Fraud in Sports is aimed at ensuring fair play which is the basic principle of the Olympic movement. The Code will be operative from April 1, 2010 and shall be binding upon all athletes and sports bodies according to the ministry dictate.

The IOC president Jacques Rogge has also vowed a tough line on anyone taking drugs or lying about their age at this year’s Youth Olympic Games to be held in Singapore in August which is the inaugural event for 14 to 18-year-olds. "The fight against doping has always been my number one priority and we have shown that we mean business in the traditional Olympic Games, both winter and summer," said Rogge, the innovator behind the Youth Olympics.

"We are also going to put a lot of energy into our cultural and educational programme about the prevention of doping because this is the age category that is the most important one in terms of doping prevention." Education and cultural activities for the athletes will be an integral part of the Games, running in tandem with the sport. The Belgian emphasised that the event should not be just about winning.

"It must be fun, it cannot be too serious. The athletes are between 14 and 18-years-old and that is the age to celebrate, not necessarily the age to achieve." But he warned the IOC would not tolerate anyone cheating by faking their age to meet entry requirements, as has happened at Olympics in the past.

"It is true that in the past there has been cheating both by pretending that they were older, in sports like gymnastics, or by pretending they were younger than the age category in some team sports," he said.

"We definitely are going to follow that. We will be relying very much on the National Olympic Committees and the national federations because they are running sport on a day-to-day basis. If we suspect any cheats, we will be tough, there’s no doubt about that."

In the light of the seriousness as viewed by the IOC president it is also certainly a wake up call to our administrators of sports in our country which had become necessary and is now a perfect time to adopt a National Code against age fraud in sports, which is duly supported by a well laid down mechanism to prevent, detect and penalise such offences.

According to the notification issued by Injeti Srinivas, Joint Secretary to the Government of India, all National Sports Federations are advised to adopt the following broad principles to ensure that overage players are not allowed to participate in national and other championships and are not included in national teams participating in international sports competitions.

(i) National Sports Federations should introduce a system of issuing identity cards to national athletes, which should, inter-alia, contain name, photograph, signature and date of birth of the player, date of issue of the identity card and its validity period.

(ii) The Federation should lay down a clear policy with regard to submission of documents for the purpose of age verification such as birth certificate, passport, school certificate, etc. The identity card containing the date of birth of the player should be issued only after the Federation has fully satisfied itself about the age of the player.

(To be concluded)