As the 1 January 2009 fast approaches, UK Sport has not only been busy preparing British athletes for the revised Code and new International Standards, but has also assisted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and developing National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs) with overseas initiatives to help those regions to better prepare themselves for the fight against doping in sport.
UK Sport is committed to supporting the training of Regional Anti-Doping Organisations (RADOs) across the globe in order to try and bring greater worldwide unity to drug testing. As a result, UK Sport has had a presence at three recent overseas workshops.
At the Gulf Coast Countries (GCC) and Yemen (YEM) RADO Test Distribution Planning Workshop, UK Sport’s Testing Manager Kevin Haynes was in attendance to assist the region with the risk assessment and planning of effective testing programmes in line with the revised International Standard for Testing. This one-day workshop also addressed the subject of in and out of competition testing and advised on UK best practice for planning and implementing testing programmes. Around 30 delegates attended from all seven countries in the region, and included the Heads of individual NADOs from the area, RADO board members and representatives from the Olympic Council of Asia. Meanwhile Nick Wojek, the Medical Co-ordinator from UK Sport's Education team, also visited the West Asian RADO in Jordan, to give training on the new International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE) and the TUE system in general.
“In order for the fight against doping in sport to be effective it has to be a truly global effort,” said Haynes. “The revised Code and International Standards are a positive step forward in bringing global harmonisation closer. Every nation should be meeting the required standards of operation across all areas of anti-doping. Therefore by supporting these workshops, UK Sport is doing what it can to help make this a reality. We have assisted now in a number of these sessions across the world and we look forward to continuing to help WADA, RADOs and other NADOs to move towards a more consistent worldwide system. In addition, every session we attend also helps to develop our own programmes as we continue to learn from our partner organisations around the world.”
Elsewhere, separate to RADO activity, UK Doping Control Officer (DCO) Iain Smith did an outstanding job in conducting a three day DCO workshop in conjunction with the Oman Anti-Doping Commission – the aim of which was to train and prepare DCOs for the forthcoming GCC Cup which takes place in January. In total, 13 DCOs were trained for the region’s biggest multi-sport event to comply with the IST and ensure that testing at the event is of the highest standard.
