WADA suspends India’s anti-doping lab

NEW DELHI — The World Anti-Doping Agency has suspended India’s drug-testing laboratory for six months, saying its analysis isn’t up to scratch.

WADA says it found “non-conformities” during a visit to the New Delhi lab, including with isotope ratio mass spectrometry, a method used to detect banned steroids. The lab must now ship its untested samples to other labs.

That leaves the international anti-doping system with a hole in its coverage for southern Asia. The nearest accredited facilities are in Qatar, Thailand and China.

New Delhi tested 7,163 samples in 2017, the last year for which statistics are available, ranking it 17th out of 31 labs worldwide.

Since finding evidence of cover-ups at the Russian anti-doping lab, WADA has stepped up its controls. That’s included stripping labs in Kazakhstan and Portugal of their accreditations altogether.