Sport sponsors must join the war on doping, says anti-drug boss

Sport sponsors should help fund the fight against the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs, according to the head of the UK’s anti-doping agency. Nicole Sapstead, chief executive of UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), also urged them to ask what steps the teams and events they were sponsoring were taking to tackle doping.

Her call came amid concerns about a fresh doping scandal emerging in Russia. “I would ask sponsors who get behind massive major events or teams, shouldn’t some of that sponsorship be carved out and put into promoting clean sport or challenging that sport as to what due diligence they have done about their anti-doping programme?” said Sapstead. “Do you really want to put your brand with somebody who may be found wanting?”

Sponsors could not rely on UKAD, which is funded by government, or its counterparts in other countries, to tackle the issue on their own, she suggested. “For too long sports have turned round and gone ‘it’s OK, UK Anti-Doping are there, they get a load of public money and they should just do the job, and we’ll keep our television and sponsorship deals, all the money that we generate commercially for ourselves and our investors. Enough already, they need to put their money where their mouths are.”

Lengthy legal battles that arise when athletes fight their bans drain anti-doping organisations, Sapstead argued. “There is something to be said for a contribution coming from the sports and those involved in sport. I don’t see any issue with a sponsor saying we’ll give you X, but a percentage of this should go into an integrity pot to ensure you are taking the necessary precautions to ensure that your sport is fit for purpose.”

Her call for greater resources to fight doping underlines the significant threat the problem presents to sport at a time of heightened concern about state-sponsored drug cheating.

Yesterday it emerged that Rusada, the Russian anti-doping agency, which has been suspended for non-compliance in the past, is under scrutiny amid reports that data from a Moscow drug-testing lab were manipulated before being delivered to the World Anti-Doping Agency, Wada, earlier this year.

Wada’s compliance review committee is expected to present the information to the agency’s executive committee when it meets tomorrow in Tokyo. “There’s a big fat question mark over how this is going to play out,” said Sapstead, who told the Observer that she had learned in the spring that there was a tranche of data coming out of Russia that was proving problematic for compliance officials.

“Depending on what happens next week will determine whether Rusada may be declared non-compliant again,” she said. “When you have a national anti-doping organisation which is non-compliant you are back into the question of how do you get them back into the fold?”

Rusada has been meeting independent benchmarks for its testing programme, raising the question of who could have manipulated the data. “Somebody will have had to get into that laboratory,” Sapstead said. “If it was people in the lab or IT experts, they would have received that order from somewhere. Where did it come from?”

Tomorrow UKAD publishes a report highlighting the role it played in 2015, when Wada asked it to fill the gap left by Rusada’s previous suspension following allegations Russia was engaged in state-sponsored doping.

Trevor Pearce, UKAD’s chair, said the organisation had agreed to step in to ensure British athletes were competing on a level playing field.

“The message we get from our athletes and sports-governing bodies is: how do we make this a fair process for our people, wherever they compete, wherever they train?

“If you’ve got Russian athletes complying with a national anti-doping organisation that must mean, one hopes, that there will be fair competition for our athletes going to Tokyo in 2020,” he said. UKAD’s report reveals the challenges that would arise in the run-up to Tokyo if Rusada were to be suspended again. Over a 17-month period while Rusada was suspended, UKAD conducted nearly 5,000 tests on more than 600 Russian athletes, of which 79 produced an “adverse analytical finding” – revealing a prohibited substance. A further 21 “non-analytical findings” were issued for offences including tampering with, and evading, tests.

Most positive results were for Meldonium, a performance-enhancing drug, prohibited in 2016, that led to Maria Sharapova’s temporary ban from world tennis. UKAD also issued 240 “whereabouts failures” against athletes for failing to be at a specified location to provide a sample.

“There were a number of times we tried to gain access and were turned away,” Sapstead said. “The people we were using were threatened and told ‘come back here again and there will be consequences’.”

Further scandals lay ahead, she suggested. “I’ve always said Russia is not alone in this,” she added. “They are certainly not the only ones who have got a significant, serious problem. It’s just a matter of time before something else is exposed.”