The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has clarified how money within a US$20 million fund, set up in December 2013 to ‘protect the clean athlete’, will be allocated. In a 1 March 2015 statement, the IOC said that it would be taking ‘a fresh look at the testing procedures and sample taking’. The IOC told the Sports Integrity Initiative that this means extra resources will be allocated towards targeted testing.

“Out of the $20 million fund aimed at protecting the clean athletes from drug cheats and match-fixing and related corruption, $10 million is being committed to research in the fight against doping”, said an IOC spokesperson. “$6 million will be matched by world governments, which means that $16 million will go to new research funding”. The IOC said that $12 million of this would be administered by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and $4 million by the IOC.

“As for the implementation of Olympic Agenda 2020, the IOC is investing in gathering and processing intelligence”, continued the spokesperson. “A similar number of tests as previous Games will be carried out, but the plan is to spend extra resources on making sure they are targeted tests, as effective and as big a deterrent as possible”.

The 1 March release also mentioned that $2.5 million would be allocated to set up workshops in association with Interpol to combat match-fixing. “The aim of the workshops is to raise awareness among both the sport movement and law enforcement agencies of the need to protect the integrity of sports competitions and to work together in this regard”, said the spokesperson. “The first workshop is expected to take place in May in Canada ahead of the Pan American Games. It will involve representatives of sports organisations as well as representatives of police forces and other law enforcement agencies. Participants will learn how to share information and intelligence”.

The IOC has also enlarged its Ethics Office, headed by Pâquerette Girard Zappelli, to become an ‘Ethics and Compliance’ Office. “This is a consequence of recommendation 30 of Olympic Agenda 2020 – recognising the importance of strengthening the fundamental missions of the Ethics Commission as well as its independence – and recommendation 31 – expressing the willingness to enlarge the competence of the Ethics office”, said the spokesperson.