Monaco- While acknowledging the burden placed upon athletes, the IAAFbelieves that the whereabouts system, which currently involvesathletes providing a 60 minute testing slot 7 days a week, is bothproportionately fair as well as absolutely mandatory for theeffective fight against doping in sport.
Athletesin the IAAF testing pool have been providing similar whereaboutsinformation since as early as 1997. It is only now in 2009 thatmany other sports, countries, and athletes who have never had such asystem in place, and rarely done any out-of-competition testing, arestarting to realise the work involved and the effort the IAAF andits’ athletes have gone to over the previous decade. The IAAFis proud of its athletes who have been providing their whereaboutsinformation, and been tested out-of-competition for longer than thosein any other sports.
IAAFstakeholders including our Member Federations, sponsors, spectatorsand most importantly our athletes, are constantly demanding that theIAAF does all it can in the fight against doping. The mostimportant part of our response to these demands is theout-of-competition doping control programme to which the IAAFprovides approximately 2 million USD of funding each year. Thebasis of this programme is that an athlete can be tested at anytimeof the year and in any place. Without receiving accurate and completewhereabouts information then this task becomes impossible.
TheIAAF also acknowledges that for many athletes, the process ofproviding whereabouts is difficult and time consuming. There is nohiding from this reality. Clean athletes who do all they can topromote the fight against doping are concerned that they may besanctioned for missed tests. The IAAF believes these arelegitimate concerns and cannot ignore them. It is not theintention of the IAAF or these new rules to punish athletes foradministrative errors, but to test them effectively. This is whyextensive measures are put in place to guard against unintentionalwhereabouts failures.
TheIAAF has also received information from World Champions, World recordholders, and the Athletes Commission supporting the whereaboutssystem. The opinions of these athletes is relatively similar – thatthe whereabouts requirements are a burden upon them and are sometimesdifficult – but they fully support the system and will do anythingthey can to rid the sport of doping, even if that means providingtheir whereabouts for one hour each day.
Forthe full text of this opinion – please see the IAAF website:http://www.iaaf.org/antidoping/news/newsid=49573.html
Selectedathlete quotes
BlankaVlasic (CRO), HighJump - World Champion
“Iunderstand that it is necessary for IAAF to know where theathletesare at all times because there is no other way in this moment tofight the doping problem. Especially this 60 minute slot is a goodidea, because eachof us could tell with 99% when are we at homefor sure. In this way we would be able to avoid inconveniences withanti-doping controls.”
KojiMurofushi (JPN), HammerThrow - Multiple Olympic Medallist, IAAFAthletes Commission Member
“Ihave been doing it (provision of whereabouts information) since Ihave become a world class athlete in 2001 when I received amedalat the Edmonton world championships. I do it as a daily chorehoping for a clean world of sports. I think it is the results of theefforts put in by the testers to protect the sport. It may be a bitdifficult until you get used to it, but once you get used it, I donot think it is difficult.”
PaulaRadcliffe (GBR), Marathon– World Record Holder, IAAFAthletes Commission Member
“Itis fine, a system I am used to. Obviously sometimes it can be ahassle and something I always have to remember but a small price topay to work towards clean sport. IAAF always make it easy to changewith texts or emails, Adams a bit difficult to get used to but we canwork together to make it more user friendly. Weare all committed to doing what we can to keep our sport clean. Thatmeans sacrifices by clean athletes but we know those running antidoping understand we are human and are there to help with any updateproblems. For truly international fair testing everywhere we needthis.”
Furtherdetails and athlete quotes can be found in the full opinion on theIAAF website:
http://www.iaaf.org/antidoping/news/newsid=49573.html
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