Doping scandal has put many of our bright young athletes and one of their coaches from Ukraine in the dock. They will obviously pay a heavy price for this and they must. There are no excuses for taking banned substances. But are they the only ones responsible for the mess? This is not the first time that some of our sports persons have been caught taking banned drugs. And coaches, doctors, nutritionists and other support staff are not appointed by the sports persons themselves. They are appointed by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and various sports federations. The incidents of dope test failures have gone up particularly after the practice of hiring coaches and other support staff from dope-tainted East European countries like Ukraine and Belarus was started some years ago. This would indicate a deliberate attempt to promote usage of banned substances to improve performance of our sports persons and point to involvement of people at decision making positions, not excluding the sports ministry. Shouldn’t then the remedial actions begin with sacking of those in the decision making positions?