By Nitin Srivastava
New Delhi [India], January 28 (ANI): Kiren Rijiju, the Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports on Thursday said that all the Olympic-bound athletes are training in full swing to bring maximum laurels to the country.
Tokyo Olympics were slated to be held in 2020 but the event was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and now the Games would be going ahead this year from July 23 to August 8.
“Presently there is a pandemic situation so there have been certain restrictions with regards to our expenditure and finance ministry is looking into it. But we are not letting this constraint have any kind of impact in terms of training and in terms of coaching our athletes. Athletes are training in full swing, especially for the Olympics, so there are no budgetary constraints for our sports department especially with regards to the training of the athletes,” Rijiju told ANI.
On Thursday, Rijiju launched a breakthrough Reference Material for use in chemical testing in the field of anti-doping synthesized by collaborative efforts of the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) and National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Guwahati.
This Reference Material (RM), has been identified by NDTL as one of the rarely available RMs globally and would be used to strengthen anti-doping measures in all World Anti Doping Agency (WADA)-accredited laboratories.
Talking to ANI about this substance, Rijiju said: “NDTL is a very important laboratory for our sports and country, there were certain issues but now we have come up with a plan to ramp up and today we are proudly launching an item which is a first reference substance for anti-doping. We are going to distribute the product to other countries also, this shows the capability of our country. The research capability and understanding of our scientists is great.”
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NDTL and NIPER Guwahati was signed in August 2020 which proposes to synthesize 20 rarely available Reference Materials (RMs) during a period of 3 years. These RMs are used essentially during dope testing for quality control purposes and therefore their availability remains critical in sports dope testing, globally. (ANI)
