The trouble with Ostarine: Jimmy Wallhead’s
16th March 2018
Features
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) reported a US$621,000 operating profit for the year to 31 December 2015, the year in which it investigated allegations of systemic Russian doping. However, this profit was hit by an exchange rate impact on the revaluation of its assets, which resulted in a net loss of $2 million.
In his introduction to WADA’s annual report, WADA President Sir Craig Reedie revealed that the work of WADA’s Independent Commission in investigating those allegations had cost $1.5 million, 5.4% of WADA’s $27.5 million budget for the 2015 year. ‘If full-blown investigations are to become the norm, then we must of course seriously explore greater funding for our community’, he wrote. ‘There have been calls for a slice of the millions in sport television revenue to be contributed to anti-doping. This is a bold idea, and I put it to the leading sport federations and broadcasters: now is the time to look at this seriously.’
However, WADA’s total income from annual contributions and grants was $29.9 million, only slightly up from 2014’s $29.3 million. Of this income, $10.3 million was spent on salaries – a reduction of almost $1 million as compared to 2014. Evenly spread amongst WADA’s 81 employees from 36 nations, this would give an average 2015 salary of $127,200.
WADA highlighted that it had renewed its $160,000 annual grant to the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations (iNADO), which recently lent its support to an strengthened WADA. On 17 October 2015, an Olympic Summit hosted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that anti-doping should be entirely separate from sport. WADA has been asked by the IOC to convene an ‘Extraordinary World Conference on Doping’ in 2017 about how this will occur, and an Olympic Summit on 8 October 2016 will propose further measures in this respect.
WADA said that of the 1,759 decisions it received in 2015, 15 resulted in appeals filed by WADA in 2014 or earlier. Nine of those appeals were upheld or partially upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS); two were settled out of court; one was withdrawn and three were upheld by a national appeals body.
WADA also confirmed that since 2001, it has committed over $68 million to scientific research. In the 2015 financial year, it committed $4.4 million to scientific research, up from $4.1 million the previous year.
WADA also confirmed that a new Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) will be launched before the end of the year. ADAMS is an internet-based management system that allows anti-doping organisations (ADOs) and athletes to fulfil their requirements under the World Anti-Doping Code.
This includes athlete ‘whereabouts’ for testing, which requires athletes within a registered testing pool (RTP) to specify their location for testing for one hour each day; test planning & results management for anti-doping organisations; laboratory results management; and therapeutic use exemption (TUE) management.
WADA also confirmed that there has been a 30% increase in the number of TUEs entered into ADAMS in 2015. WADA said that this increase reflected ‘both increased use of ADAMS by more ADOs and an increased number of TUEs granted by certain ADOs’. It said that it continues to monitor the TUEs granted to athletes and reversed two TUEs for testosterone use during the year.
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