Doping and Governance Priorities for Summer Olympic Federations

(ATR) The umbrella body for the summer Olympic sports aims to step up the fight against doping and improve the governance of member federations in 2018.

They were highlighted as priorities at a meeting of the ASOIF Council on Wednesday.

Officials of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations focused on anti-doping efforts and operations of the IOC’s new independent International Testing Agency (ITA). Members also reviewed the work of their governance taskforce and discussed the increasing role for IFs in preparations for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

"Clearly, a unified, efficient fight against doping and improving governance in sport remain pressing issues," said ASOIF president Francesco Ricci Bitti after the meeting.

"We will continue to support the functioning of the ITA which should be an important asset to IFs."

ASOIF has strongly supported the creation of the ITA and again encouraged federations to make use of it. This new body will provide doping controls and other services to IFs and major event organizations that wish to delegate their anti-doping programs to an independent organization.

The council welcomed the recent appointment of Benjamin Cohen as director general as an important step which it hopes "will speed up ITA’s operational readiness in the coming months".

ASOIF’s governance panel updated members on its latest developments.

Ricci Bitti expressed satisfaction with the progress of ASOIF’s governance project, saying he was "delighted" that all members, including new associate members, participated in the second assessment round.

All ASOIF members submitted a questionnaire by the mid-February deadline.

A detailed report, including governance concerns centring on the 33 summer Olympic sports, will be delivered at the ASOIF general assembly in Bangkok on April 15.

A new governance monitoring unit, approved by the ASOIF Council last November, will soon be created. Its aim is to guide IFs on governance matters by assessing their activity in order to provide corrective action reports.

The IOC’s push to make the summer Olympic federations a bigger part of Olympic planning was backed by council members. John Coates, the IOC's watchdog chief for Tokyo 2020, had restated this requirement at a meeting in the Japanese capital in December.

"To make this happen, IFs should play a greater role with their strong experience harnessed more effectively," ASOIF said in a statement. "This needs to be implemented in close collaboration with the Tokyo 2020 sports department and based on sports delivery plans developed for each sport."

The status of the Sports Data Warehouse, previously known as the IF Data Project, was also on Wednesday's meeting agenda. Launched by ASOIF in 2013, the project aims to establish better ownership and control of IF sports data and to improve data standards among members - especially for the Olympics.

In 2016, the IOC took over the project to build synergies with the Olympic Channel. The plan is to use the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympics as the first test event for the system under efforts to have the platform operational for the Tokyo 2020 Games.

The council also welcomed the election of Nenad Lalovic, president of United World Wrestling, as the summer Olympic sports new representative on the IOC executive board. He will serve a four-year term.

Reported by Mark Bisson

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.