POSTED: Friday January 21st 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Basketball stars open up in innovative Clean Game campaign
Men and women basketball stars come together to promote their fight for a clean sport
GENEVA (Clean Game) | 21.01.2011 - FIBA on Friday launched its new Clean
Game video series, in which international stars from the men and women’s
game share their views on a range of issues related to the fight for a clean
sport.
Steering clear of the moralising and repressive tone sometimes used to
combat doping, the new 10-part video mini-series takes the unique approach
of sensitizing athletes on both the dangers and the responsibilities they
face, basing itself on openness and debate.
“Sometimes, the temptations must be talked about for them to remain only
temptations,” says Spanish international Rudy Fernandez.
“Basketball is my life, if I find that someone I have been competing against
has an unfair advantage, I am going to be really upset about it. I think
everyone needs to take that stance,” says Australia’s Lauren Jackson.
The 11 players discuss topics such as healthy physical conditioning,
avoiding temptations, who to trust for advice, how to educate oneself about
medicines and food supplements.
“People want to make it. You’ve got pressure, but you are always
responsible, because you decide what you are doing with your body. You’ve
got to be careful and listen to your body and come back only when you’re
ready. Don’t try to rush it,” advises France’s Boris Diaw.
“Enhance your skills by practising daily and more intensively, gradually you
become stronger as well,” says China’s Yi Jianlian.
The players, who all represented their countries in last summer’s FIBA World
Championships, share key advice on how to stay clean by steering clear of
the traps faced by sportsmen and women and protect them from possibly wrong
advice by their entourage. These increasingly also involve the dangers
resulting from presence of banned substances in supposedly clean products.
“You have to make sure that it is a legitimate product. Sometimes a company
might push in something else under the label that actually is an illegal
substance. Make sure the team doctor knows. You have to be 100% sure before
you take something because if you get caught, you’ll be the one who gets
suspended and not the company that sold you the drug or the guy who gave you
the substance,” explains Russia’s Sasha Kaun.
“Hmm, Clean Game, what does that mean? It makes you want to do research to
find out what it is. When you get the background of it you’re like ‘that’s
kind of cool, I want to be a part of it too’, ” says USA’s World
Championship gold medallist Tamika Catchings.
FIBA believes that this campaign - which also includes Robertas Javtokas
(LTU), Ersan Ilyasova (TUR), Patrick Mills (AUS), Alessandra Oliveira (BRA)
and Novika Velivkovic (SRB) - will build on the past successes of the Clean
Game programme, that in 2010 saw 156 tests carried out in the FIBA World
Championships for men and women, all of which returned negative results.
A systematic testing programme was also implemented at youth level, during
the two U17 World Championships, while together with the World Anti-Doping
Agency (WADA) and National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs), FIBA was
involved with an important number of out of competition controls.
FIBA Secretary General and IOC Member Patrick Baumann said:
“2010 was a good year in the fight against doping in basketball, but we want
to build on this solid platform and this new campaign sends an important
message in a tone that unites rather than just points the finger.”
“While doping control remains necessary, our aim is of course to avoid the
use of prohibited substances altogether. I think these videos will help
players protect themselves and wish to thank the players for their time.
Their contributions show that there is a strong willingness from within
basketball to keep it healthy and fair. In the name of a better sport, we
all need to fight together for a Clean Game.”
The video campaign is available at http://cleangame.fiba.com and on FIBA’s
youtube page http://youtube.com/fibaworld.
About FIBA
FIBA (www.fiba.com) - the world governing body for basketball - is an
independent association formed by 213 National Basketball Federations
throughout the world. It is recognised as the sole competent authority in
basketball by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Global Partners
For further information about FIBA and FIBA Championships visit
facebook.com/fibaworld and twitter.com/fibaworld or youtube.com/fibaworld.
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Keywords · FIBA · International · Basketball · Federation · Clean Game · Lauren Jackson · Boris Diaw · Rudy Fernandez
Name: Florian Wanninger
Organization: FIBA
Email:
Phone: +41-22 545 00 00
URL: www.fiba.com
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