Sport Integrity Opportunities in the Time of Coronavirus
- PDF / 370,999 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 63 Downloads / 159 Views
COMMENTARY
Sport Integrity Opportunities in the Time of Coronavirus Yannis Pitsiladis1,2 · Borja Muniz‑Pardos3 · Mike Miller4 · Michele Verroken5
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic provides a unique opportunity for reflection on integrity challenges facing sport. The imposed lockdown in response to this global crisis has resulted in most sporting events being postponed or cancelled including the 2020 Olympic Games. While this pandemic threatens to overwhelm an already fragile world sport, it provides an unprecedented opportunity for stakeholders in sport to learn vital lessons from COVID-19, to delve into unresolved integrity issues and develop creative and long-lasting solutions. This commentary focuses on two issues affecting the integrity of sport: doping and technological fairness. Measures taken by governments to defeat COVID-19 such as policing of social distancing rules through applications monitoring people’s behaviour, self-testing at home, and collaborations amongst rival companies to speed up the development of a vaccine and search for treatments can all help inform sport. The goal to flatten the curve of a pandemic to safeguard public health involves all athletes, regardless of sport or rivalry and is a welcome departure from the disproportionate focus on health protection of ‘individual’ athlete/team [1]. Many technologies that enable us to work from home such as teaching students on-line, applications for medical advice, prescriptions and referrals, and treating patients in hospitals/care homes via video links are destined to alter the way we live and work after the pandemic and can be used to enhance sport integrity.
* Yannis Pitsiladis [email protected] 1
Collaborating Centre of Sports Medicine, University of Brighton, Eastbourne, UK
2
International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS), Lausanne, Switzerland
3
GENUD (Growth, Exercise, Nutrition and Development) Research Group, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
4
World Olympians Association, Lausanne, Switzerland
5
Sporting Integrity Ltd, Stoke Mandeville, UK
Anti-doping testing in sport has all but ceased due to the lockdown raising suspicion about doping opportunities. Creative thinking such as in-home self-drug testing by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency involving athletes who consented to provide urine and small dried blood samples at home is controversial [2]. Athletes are required to complete their normal whereabouts, while a doping control officer connects via videoconference during a prescribed time period. Using testing kits sent to their homes, athletes provide their urine samples in the bathroom whilst their laptop remains outside the room, after giving the doping control officer a virtual tour. Sample provision is timed and the athlete measures their urine temperature to demonstrate it is freshly provided. Athletes also apply an auto-sampler to their arm and collect a blood sample, and are responsible for packaging and sending their samples to the anti-doping labor
Data Loading...
