Historic Olympic medal for US is Jha's ultimate goal

A missing +1 dialling prefix cost Kanak Jha more than a year's disruption to his career, but that has not stopped the United States table tennis player from achieving more milestones.

- David Lee

For 16 months between December 2022 and March 2024, the 24-year-old was suspended by the US Anti-Doping Agency for accumulating three whereabouts failures within a 12-month period. This was after he did not include the +1 country code for his phone number in a form, resulting in him being uncontactable by anti-doping officials.

Such information allows anti-doping organisations to locate athletes without notice, as knowing where they can be found for testing is key to ensuring effective anti-doping programmes.

Jha's initial 12-month ban was extended to 16 after he violated the initial provisional suspension by participating in an exhibition match.

He told The Straits Times: "It was tough in the beginning to accept what happened. I didn't agree with the way it went down, but I just got to adapt to the situation. So I just tried to keep my head low and spend time off the court with my family."