POSTED: May 23rd 2012

NewsUpdate

SportAccord making significant progress towards anti doping compliance with the Ifs

LAURA WALDEN in QUEBEC / Sports Features Communications

May 23 - SportAccord is making good progess with their new Doping-Free Sport Unit (DFSU) reaching out directly to the international sports federations to offer assistance with their anti-doping issues.

SportAccord’s Doping-Free Sport Unit (DFSU) has made stellar progress in working with the federations to bring them up to par with the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) Code Compliance. The federations are up to 98% compliant with the code as of May 2012.

The DFSU office works out of the SportAccord headquarters in Lausanne and now WADA has just opened an European Regional office with Frederick Donze as director who is in charge of international relations with the federations.

Francoise Dagouret, DFSU manager, met with the Olympic press at the SportAccord convention to bring them up to speed on the program and to field questions.

When WADA was started back thirteen years ago many of the federations didn’t follow one distinct set of rules and this was the same for the governments.  It was one of the biggest challenges to strive to accomplish an overall anti-doping code that they could get them to all adhere to.

The plan to work through SportAccord, the umbrella organization for all the international sports federations, makes a lot of sense for WADA to fill in the gaps and has proved to be a successful plan.

Dagouret said, “The first mission was to get them to sign the code and to adapt their rules to the code. By May 2012 we have almost reached everyone with 98% compliance.”

The DFSU has worked closely together with WADA to set up a number of services to aid the federations. There is a DFSU extranet and a daily newsletter and even an anti-doping hotline that works both through phone and email.

The hold informal lunch meetings open to the Ifs anti doping staff in Lausanne and they also offer a number of at cost services for the members. These can range from a €310 doping test to general yearly packages that can run from $50K to $80K depending on the needs of the federations.

The members remain responsible for their anti-doping programmes as signatories of the WADA code but can choose to outsource some or all of their administration work to DFSU.

DFSU has also tried to keep the costs down yet the quality control high and the same technicians are called in for services that are normally used by WADA.

The budget for DFSU has grown from around $150K in 2009 to approximately $700K in 2012 and SportAccord has dedicated significant funds toward the project.

Keywords · SportAccord · WADA · Antidoping

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