For close to a decade and a half, Botswana has been enjoying an unprecedented success in the international track and field athletics arena.
Due to this success, after the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) was incepted by World Athletics in 2017, Botswana was placed in category B. This category consists of countries which enjoy a certain level of success and are at medium risk of doping.
Under the AIU categorisation, which is updated annually, countries are placed in one of three categories, ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. Category A is made of countries on the watch list for doping violations or with the highest risk of doping. Category C, which is the lowest, is made up of countries with the lowest risk of doping.
Now as Botswana continues to wrack up doping violations, Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) is getting worried. If the upward trajectory of doping violations continues, the country may be elevated to Category A, placing her among countries with high risk of doping.
For a country like Botswana, which prides itself in producing world class athletes, this is not good news. “As the BAA, we are disappointed, and I do not even know if disappointed is the right word to use,” association’s acting president Oabona Theetso says.
“Doping is now a scourge for us. We can no longer afford to take it at face value and say our athletes return adverse analytical findings because of naivety. They are not dumb. We now need to dig deeper to find the root cause of these doping violations.”
The main concern is that if Botswana continues to experience an upward trajectory of doping incidents, even clean athletes will be affected. Their results will be doubted and they will be painted with the same brush as those who use performance enhancing drugs.
Of even greater concern for the BAA, more female athletes are now being caught in the doping scandals. “We have had five (5) doping violations in the past two years affecting female athletes. This for us is very bad.”
“We are already decrying a lack of women athletes in our national athletics teams. At this moment, it is difficult for us to have a strong women national team. Now, if you look at the athletes who returned positive doping results, they were all part of our promising women athletes. These athletes were coming up well. We were already optimistic that they would help us build our women teams,” Theetso says.
The acting BAA president cannot however pinpoint where the problem comes from. He believes proper investigations are needed to find the real cause of the problem. “To solve this problem, we should not just look at the athletes. We have to answer these questions, are our athletes in good hands? Are our coaches, administrators, guardians as well as those close to the athletes clean? That is why I insist investigations are needed to find the root cause of our doping violations.”
While he cannot pinpoint the cause of the doping problems, Theetso does not rule out pressure. Athletics, like most sports, is a big business. It is no longer just entertainment. It is a high-income career for excelling athletes. There are many incentives both locally and internationally, monetary and in kind, for excelling athletes.
“There is obviously a pressure to perform, on both athletes and coaches. We expect both of them to deliver. As an athlete, you want to be among the best, to be seen. As a coach, you want to show results. You want your athletes to be up there among the best.”
“An athlete is the mirror of his or her coach. And as we say, an athlete is as good as his or her athletes. So, there is pressure all round. And this can lead to resorting to use performance enhancing drugs to achieve results.”
With all these in mind, the BAA will not want to take a guess on the increasing number of doping cases in Botswana. Acting on assumptions will not uproot the problem. It will only address the symptoms without providing lasting solutions.
“We are already taking action. We can not divulge, but we are doing something very significant to investigate some of these incidents to stem out the trend,” Theetso says.
