IOC Athletes’ Commission statement on anti-doping

20 | 3 | 2017

The following statement has been made by the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission:

As the elected athletes of the Olympic Movement, over recent days we have actively participated as representatives of the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission in important discussions on anti-doping at both the IOC Executive Board meeting in PyeongChang and at the WADA Symposium in Lausanne. At the end of these meetings, we would like to highlight our focus on several key areas in the protection of clean athletes:

• Following the information produced by the McLaren Report, everyone involved must work together to build on the contents to establish sufficient evidence to allow the IOC and International Federations to pursue the disciplinary and legal cases (and all appropriate sanctions) against those athletes, entourage members and organisations implicated in the McLaren Report.

• Minimum testing standards must be established on a sport and discipline basis, which all athletes from every continent must meet in order to be eligible to compete in a World Championships or Olympic Games. This will assure every athlete that there is a minimum standard met by each athlete at every major competition.

• In addition, we support the Winter Olympic International Federations in establishing additional and higher levels of both in- and out-of-competition testing for athletes considered high risk, including, but not limited to, all Russian athletes. This must be implemented well in advance of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 and coordinated through WADA. This is vital in giving athletes competing at PyeongChang 2018 confidence that each athlete has undergone rigorous international pre-Olympic testing if they fall into any high-risk category.

• Athletes’ trust in the anti-doping system will also rely on the efficiency of highly secured platforms that will ensure their confidential data are protected.

• Sports bodies and governments must work urgently and in partnership to address the necessary governance and structural changes to build more effective and more independent international and national anti-doping systems. Our Commission is currently completing a position paper with our view on the path forward related to the wider anti-doping system.

We are totally committed to supporting clean athletes and will do everything possible to ensure their rights are upheld.

You can read the original statement on the Olympic Athletes’ Hub here.