Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 27, 2024: The Olympic Council of Asia’s relentless quest for clean sport is moving ever onward at the OCA Development Programme for Coaches and Referees from Southeast Asia and East Asia in Kuala Lumpur this week.
Anti-Doping is one of four elements of the OCA’s “Guarding the Asian Games” initiative along with safeguarding, the prevention of manipulation of competition and Olympic values.
These four topics are being presented on a daily basis to the coaches and referees from the four sports of archery, badminton, swimming and table tennis, and on Wednesday morning it was the turn of the table tennis participants to learn all about anti-doping.
The topic was presented by Mr. Gobinathan Nair, Director-General of the Singapore-based South East Asia Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (SEARADO) and a member of the OCA Anti-Doping Committee.
As part of an athlete’s support personnel, coaches can play a large part in the fight against doping in sport, and the presentation focused on several key topics. These included the roles and responsibilities of coaches, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code, the prohibited list, Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE), athletes’ rights and responsibilities and education.
The presentation also covered the structure of the anti-doping movement at local, regional, continental and global level through the National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO), Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (RADO), the OCA and WADA, as well as the role of the International Testing Agency in managing anti-doping programmes for major event organisers.
The SEARADO Director-General encouraged the coaches to educate their athletes as part of the OCA campaign for clean sport and highlighted the WADA Anti-Doping Education and Learning platform, known as ADEL – one of four main anti-doping education activities along with awareness, information and values-based education.
“Together with the support of the OCA, we have translated the ADEL section for international level athletes into 16 Asian languages,” Gobi said.
“This is part of our continent-wide initiative to provide awareness and education for all athletes in Asia.”
The OCA is now making it mandatory for all athletes attending OCA games to complete the ADEL registration as part of their accreditation process to ensure that all participants are aware of their responsibilities regarding anti-doping.
“For the Hangzhou Asian Games last year, we achieved a 97 per cent success rate among athletes who completed the ADEL module,” he added.
There were 14 positive cases among athletes in Hangzhou, which was the same number as the previous Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang in 2018.
“I am aiming for zero at the next Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan in 2026. This is the first time we are really pushing education, and all the participants of the OCA Development Programme for Coaches and Referees in Kuala Lumpur can all play their part in helping us to achieve our goal,” he concluded.