Promoting Sporting Integrity Through Education

According to Nafziger & Rossi (2011), doping is a prohibited practice in sports that
relates to the use of methods and substances whose goal is to enhance one’s performance.
Doping greatly harms the integrity of sports. It was to combat doping that World Anti-
Doping Agency (WADA) was formed in 1999 (Waddington & Moller, 2019). The
organization was formed because the International Olympics Committee (IOC), the body
previously charged with fighting doping in sports had completely fallen into disrepute by
1990s. Since its formation over twenty years ago, WADA has put in place various measures
to combat doping in sports in a more robust and effective way than the IOC. One of the
measures that WADA has taken to combat doping in sports is the use of education. This
paper examines how WADA uses education to combat doping in sports, what I like about this
approach, and shares some ideas on how this approach can be improved to make it even more
effective.

WADA describes education in the context of its activities as raising awareness,
informing, communicating, instilling values, developing skills, and decision-making
capability with the goal of preventing intentional and unintentional violations of anti-doping
rules (WADA, 2021). In 2021, the organization elevated education to become one of its key
components of anti-doping program. With this decision, education joined deterrence, rule of
law, detection, and enforcement as WADA’s main measures of combating doping in sports
(WADA, 2021). The organization promotes education by, among other things, providing
value-based education to athletes, their managers and coaches as well as parents and even
doctors. Additionally, the organization educates them about the social and legal ramifications
of doping. For instance, it is through the organization’s education program that athletes know
how long they can be banned for various doping violations.

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What I like most about WADA’s education program is that it involves all the key
stakeholders in sports integrity, not just the athletes. If the program only focused on athletes,
it would not be effective because even the most careful athletes can unintentionally take
banned substances through treatment of their doctors or taking food served to them by their
parents or spouses who may not have knowledge of the banned substances. Thus, by ensuring
that all the people that could unintentionally cause the athlete to dope are well-informed
about all banned substances, the organization helps to significantly reduce cases of
sportspeople unintentionally doping.

Despite being a great way of promoting integrity in sports through reducing cases of
doping, I still believe that more can be done to make education even more effective in
reducing doping in sports. As currently structured, the education program is purely voluntary.
Thus, it is common to find sportspeople who are completely uniformed about some of the
substances that have been recently banned. Some might not be knowledgeable about the
various anti-doping rules. This lack of knowledge is particularly common among young
athletes. To make education more effective in fighting doping, I suggest that it all aspects of
education program be made compulsory for all professional athletes. In this way, WADA will
be certain that all professional athletes have all the information that they require to keep them
from using banned substances.

In conclusion, WADA’s education program is a great initiative for combating doping
in sports. By ensuring that all sportspeople and their trainers, coaches, managers, doctors, and
even family members have as much knowledge as possible about doping-related codes,
WADA helps to significantly reduce sportspeople who unintentionally use banned
substances. It also helps to reduce intentional use of banned substances and methods by

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letting sportspeople know all the social and legal consequences of engaging in doping
activities.

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References

Nafziger, J.A.R. & Ross, S.F. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook on international sports law. Edward
Elgar: Cheltenham, UK.

WADA. (2021). What We Do: Education and Training. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-
we-do/education-and-training

Waddington, I., & Møller, V. (2019). WADA at Twenty: Old Problems and Old
Thinking? International journal of sport policy and politics, 11(2), 219-231.