Anti-Doping test (© c)
MonteCarloThe 11th IAAF World Championships in Athletics will be subject to the largest Anti-Doping Programme ever conducted by the IAAF - including both drug testing and educational activities.
The 2007 edition of these World Championships, which take place in Osaka, Japan between 25 August and 2 September 2007, will see more than 1000 samples collected, both before and during the competition, eclipsing the 885 tests conducted at the last World Championships in 2005.
“The IAAF is determined to ensure that these Championships highlight our on-going and aggressive commitment to the war on doping,” said IAAF President Lamine Diack.
“We know that the overwhelming majority of our athletes compete fairly, so it is for their sake that we must do all we can to chase down and sanction those who attempt to cheat and lie through the use of doping practices.”
“We will not tell the athletes what tests we will conduct, nor when. However anyone considering cheating should be aware we will use every available method to catch them and that should we choose to do so, we can store their samples for testing at a later date,” concluded President Diack.
And the testing is not limited only to Osaka. Since January 2007, the IAAF has collected over 1000 unannounced out-of-competition samples as the athletes prepare and train for the Osaka championships.
However, the World Championships in Osaka are not all about testing, with the important aspect of education also present in Osaka via the IAAF Athlete Outreach Programme.
The Athlete Outreach Programme made its debut in Helsinki 2005 and since then has been present at most major championships including most recently the 5th IAAF World Youth Championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
The programme encourages direct interaction with athletes while also raising awareness and education about anti-doping activities. Located close to the main stadium in Osaka, the Athlete Outreach Programme will provide competitors and coaches with the opportunity to speak with anti-doping experts from the IAAF and the Japanese Anti-Doping Agency, as well as to test their knowledge and compete for prizes by playing the anti-doping quiz which will be available in 16 different languages. The athletes will also then have the opportunity to sign a visual pledge to doping-free sport.
To help ensure that both the testing and education programmes are a success, the IAAF has formed a close and beneficial partnership with the Japanese Anti-Doping Agency (JADA). JADA staff will be heavily involved in both the testing and education activities for the duration of the Championships and the IAAF believes this cooperation will result in a world class doping control programme for Osaka 2007.
IAAF
