Nurse-turned-marathoner, Aasa, becomes oldest runner to be banned for doping

Long-distance runners are vying with sprinters to the top of the list of dope cheats, even as news of javelin thrower DP Manu’s four-year ban and middle-distance runner Kartik Kumar testing positive for a banned substance at his training base in Colorado Springs in the United States of America, shocks the Indian athletics community.

TP Aasa, a 38-year-old  nurse turned marathoner, became the oldest Indian track and field athlete to have a ban imposed by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). She was given a three-year ineligibility period after testing positive for exogenous Testosterone and metabolites 5aAdiol and 5bAdiol in a sample collected when she finished fifth in the New Delhi Marathon 2024.

Although the sample was collected on February 25, 2024, NADA placed her under provisional suspension later than September last because the National Anti-Doping Laboratory detected the banned substance after Isotope Radio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS), a technique required by WADA before releasing the findings for the abuse of endogenous steroids (Testosterone).

The NADA website is yet to make details of her ban public, but the Athletic Integrity Unit of World Athletics has listed her as one of the four Indian athletes who received sanctions from NADA in March. The others are 1500m runner Sunita and long jumper Pranita Bayadekar (three years each) and race walker Aditya Negi (four years).

It would seem that Aasa secured a one-year reduction of her ban due to early admission of the anti-doping rule violation. In claiming the dubious distinction of being the oldest athletics practitioner to be given a ban, Aasa took over from 36-year-old discus thrower Banvir Singh who was given a two-year ban after three whereabouts failures in 12 months. 

Aasa is said to have given up her job as a certified nurse in a Mumbai hospital a couple of years ago to focus on training for distance running events. In January 2024, she told Latha Venkatraman and Shyam G Memon, Mumbai based independent journalists, that some Kenyan athletes helped her with her training plans and financial support.

“A single mother, Aasa is now dependent on the money she earns from podium finishes at running races. Originally, a resident of Thalakode, Kothamangalam in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, she travels around for her races,” they reported. She told them that her son lives with her parents and her siblings and that initially they were not keen about her running but fully supported her.

A winner of the Tata Mumbai Marathon in January 2024 in a time of 3:08:08, she was fifth in the New Delhi Marathon the next month in 3:01:15. She also competed in the Tawang Marathon on 
October 24, 2024, and Phone Pe Full Marathon in Bengaluru on December 14, 2024. It is unsure if she ran these events when on provisional suspension

She competed in the 21km event in the Pune City Marathon on February 2 and in the Manipal Marathon on February 9 after NADA listed her in the list of provisionally suspended athletes as of January 13, 2025. Clearly, when it entered into an agreement with the athlete and reduced the length of her ban, NADA was unaware that she had flouted yyhe provisional suspension. 

The Athletics Integrity Unit banned marathon runners Archana Jadhav (four years), Vivek More (five years), Pradhan Kirulkar (three years) after they tested  positive for banned substances in the Pune Half Marathon in December 2024. The number of Indian long-distance runners serving anti-doping sanctions has risen to 35, as many as sprinters.

Coming on the heels of a recent report that indicated that distance running secured 23.5 per cent  of the sponsorship spends of Rs 1811 crore on non-cricket sport, it is no surprise that the number of road runners testing positive for banned substances has also shown a sudden spurt. A dozen cross country runners are also currently serving doping-relate bans.