new delhi neeraj chopra continued to conjure up historyscripting performances inspiring the likes of avinash sable and murali sreeshankar in their quest for global success but the ageold dope menace raised its ugly head again and shamed the nation at the global stageat least six top indian athletes were caught for using banned drugs and the runup to the birmingham commonwealth games as usual was marred by a series of dope positive casesthe legendary long jumper anju bobby george also senior vice president of athletics federation of india dropped a bombshell saying that athletes who trained abroad brought back banned drugs for distribution among some of their colleaguesthe 24yearold chopra the posterboy of indian athletics continued his exploits after his historic javelin throw gold in the tokyo olympics in 2021he won a silver in the world championships in the usa in july to become only the second indian after anju who won a bronze in 2003 paris edition to win a medal at the showpiecein september he became the diamond league champion by winning the finals of the prestigious meeting series adding another first to his namechopra however could not defend his commonwealth games gold at birmingham due to the minor groin injury he sustained during the world championshipsit was another eventful year for chopra but he could not breach the 90m mark he came agonisingly close with his 8994m throw when he finished second in the stockholm leg of the prestigious diamond leaguepakistans arshad nadeem did the unthinkable as he beat world champion anderson peters with a monster throw of 9018m for the cwg gold thereby becoming the second asian after chaotsun cheng of chinese taipei to enter the exclusive 90m clubin the absence of chopra it was left to steeplechaser sable and long jumper sreeshankar to lead the indian challenge in the cwg where the competition is almost world level in some events they did admirably well by winning a silver each in historic featssreeshankar missed the gold by a whisker while sable ended the hegemony of the kenyans who have won all the three medals in mens 3000m steeplechase event since the 1998 cwgbut the most remarkable was the 12 finish by eldhose paul and abdulla aboobacker in the mens triple jump which helped india achieve its secondbest medal haul after the 2010 delhi cwg with one gold four silver and three bronzehigh jumper tejaswin shankar who made it to the indian cwg team after a delhi high court order also won a bronzeother medal winners were annu rani bronze in womens javelin throw priyanka goswami silver in womens 10000m race walk and sandeep kumar bronze in mens 10000m race walkindia also won three medals in the u20 world championships in colombia with quartermiler rupal chaudhary a farmers daughter hailing from meerut district in uttar pradesh winning two medalseven as india emerges as a force to reckon with at the global athletics scene a series of high profile dope positive cases took the sheen off