The World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency (WA­DA) is an or­gan­i­sa­tion found­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee in 1999 to mon­i­tor, en­cour­age and har­monise the fight against dop­ing in sport.

WA­DA, which is based in Cana­da, is com­pli­ant with six in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. These stan­dards are the Pro­hib­it­ed List, Test­ing and In­ves­ti­ga­tion, Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Ther­a­peu­tic Use Ex­emp­tions (TUEs), Pro­tec­tion of Pri­va­cy and the Code of Com­pli­ance by the Sig­na­to­ries.

In this ar­ti­cle, the fo­cus is on the sec­ond code. The pro­ce­dure to be used by all an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions (ADOs) across the world for col­lect­ing bi­o­log­i­cal sam­ples for test­ing is out­lined in the In­ter­na­tion­al Stan­dard for Test­ing and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, pub­lished by WA­DA in 2017. WA­DA is fund­ed by gov­ern­ments across the world and by the Olympic Move­ment. All pop­u­lar sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are sig­na­to­ries to the WA­DA code and are, as such, sub­ject to the re­quired com­pli­ance and sanc­tions.

The ADOs present in the Caribbean are the Caribbean Re­gion­al An­ti-Dop­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CARA­DO), which pro­vides an­ti-dop­ing ser­vices for 17 Caribbean coun­tries and the Ja­maica An­ti-Dop­ing Com­mis­sion (JAD­CO), which pro­vides ser­vices to Ja­maica.

Ath­letes com­pet­ing in any sport, for which the sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion is a sig­na­to­ry to the WA­DA code, are sub­ject to drug test­ing. Or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion, In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil, World Ath­let­ics and even the World Chess Fed­er­a­tion are sig­na­to­ries to the code.

Ath­letes com­pet­ing at the na­tion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el may be added to a na­tion­al/in­ter­na­tion­al reg­is­tered test­ing pool. The ath­lete is no­ti­fied that they have been se­lect­ed to be a part of the test­ing pool. They are then pro­vid­ed with a list of what they are re­quired to do. Ath­letes in the reg­is­tered test­ing pool are re­quired to sub­mit elec­tron­ic cal­en­dars in­di­cat­ing where they will be avail­able for ran­dom test­ing dur­ing a one-hour pe­ri­od of each day. Overnight ac­com­mo­da­tion, reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties (train­ing, school or work) and com­pe­ti­tion times are al­so be sub­mit­ted. Sub­mis­sion of where­abouts must be done be­fore the start of each quar­ter of the year (Jan­u­ary 1, April 1, Ju­ly 1 and Oc­to­ber 1). Sub­mis­sion is done on the An­ti-Dop­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem (ADAMS) web­site or mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion. It is very sim­i­lar to the Google cal­en­dar on mo­bile phones.

No­ti­fi­ca­tion

There are two types of tests, in-com­pe­ti­tion and out-of-com­pe­ti­tion test­ing. In-com­pe­ti­tion tests may be ran­dom, such as the se­lec­tion of whichev­er ath­lete places fourth or first, or it may be a tar­get­ed test. Out-of-com­pe­ti­tion tests are usu­al­ly more ran­dom, the ath­lete does not know when or where they will be test­ed. Once se­lect­ed for test­ing, an ath­lete is no­ti­fied by a chap­er­one or a Dop­ing Con­trol Of­fi­cer (DCO) and they are read and are al­lowed to read their rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. At this point, the dop­ing con­trol per­son­nel en­sures the ath­lete has a clear un­der­stand­ing of the pro­ce­dure and in­forms the ath­lete of the type of sam­ple need­ed. Sam­ples may be urine, blood or both. The ath­lete is al­so in­formed that they may not over-hy­drate as that may pro­duce an un­suit­able sam­ple. The ath­lete must sign to con­firm they un­der­stand that they have been no­ti­fied and must re­main in di­rect ob­ser­va­tion un­til the sam­ple is pro­vid­ed.

Sam­ple Col­lec­tion

The ath­lete is tak­en to the dop­ing con­trol sta­tion, which is usu­al­ly a des­ig­nat­ed room dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions or at the ath­lete’s se­lect­ed lo­ca­tion based on sub­mis­sion on ADAMS. The DCO over­sees the sam­ple col­lec­tion process and col­lects per­son­al in­for­ma­tion from the ath­lete. The ath­lete is al­so al­lowed to de­clare blood trans­fu­sions, med­ica­tions or sup­ple­ments tak­en re­cent­ly. The ath­lete is asked to pro­vide a min­i­mum of 90mls of urine un­der di­rect ob­ser­va­tion of the DCO or chap­er­one. Once col­lect­ed, the sam­ple’s con­cen­tra­tion is test­ed to con­firm it is a suit­able sam­ple. If the sam­ple is too di­lut­ed or if the quan­ti­ty is less than 90mls, an­oth­er sam­ple must be col­lect­ed un­til the ap­pro­pri­ate quan­ti­ty is achieved. The sam­ple is pack­aged in­to two bot­tles, A and B, which can­not be re­opened with­out the des­ig­nat­ed ma­chines. The ath­lete must sign and be giv­en a copy of all doc­u­men­ta­tions. The doc­u­ment is sent with the sam­ple to a WA­DA ac­cred­it­ed lab­o­ra­to­ry for test­ing. The ath­lete is no­ti­fied if there is an ad­verse find­ing.

Blood sam­ple is col­lect­ed, pack­aged and processed in much the same way but a Blood Col­lec­tion Of­fi­cer (phle­botomist trained in ath­lete sam­ple col­lec­tion) is re­spon­si­ble for the venipunc­ture. The ath­lete must be seat­ed for at least ten min­utes be­fore sam­ple col­lec­tion. De­pend­ing on the type of blood test, such as the Ath­lete Bi­o­log­i­cal Pass­port, ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion may be re­quired (use of hy­pox­ic masks, high al­ti­tude train­ing, blood trans­fu­sions etc). The sam­ples are pack­aged in tam­per-proof tubes and kept in a re­frig­er­at­ed box un­til they ar­rive at the lab for test­ing.

All sam­ples are as­signed a unique num­ber and the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to the lab will on­ly have those num­bers to iden­ti­fy the sam­ple. No iden­ti­fi­able ath­lete’s per­son­al in­for­ma­tion is giv­en to any lab­o­ra­to­ry. The ath­lete will be con­tact­ed on­ly if there is an ad­verse an­a­lyt­i­cal find­ing.

Dr Facey is at­tached can be reached at aldeam.facey@uwi­mona.edu.jm