2024-08-24 16:08:29
The annual conference of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was held in Lausanne.
According to the press department of the Armenian National Olympic Committee, the head of the Anti-Doping Organization of Armenia, Doctor of Biological Sciences Areg Hovhannisyan was among the delegates from 38 countries. Heads of the anti-doping department of 18 international federations of various sports were also present at the conference.
The main topic was the clarification of the eight major changes made in the new code, in particular, the procedure for building the training to exclude the negative consequences of prohibited substances. Also important is the new concept of investigation. This means that anyone who witnesses an incident of taking banned substances can immediately inform the relevant hotline. Such cases have already been reported. That’s how American Armstrong, Danish Rasmussen, five Chinese cyclists representing different sports and others were disqualified.
There are substances that cannot be detected in an athlete’s body. For 12 years, athletes have been using the substance called “Growth Hormone”, the method of detection of which is still unknown. Moreover, the head of the anti-doping laboratory of Los Angeles said that in the next six years it is unlikely to be possible to detect the presence of the mentioned hormone in the body.
It is important that the money provided for the test samples is completely appropriate for the purpose, and unnecessary costs are excluded.
At the conference, Areg Hovhannisyan’s speech and the work done by us were highly appreciated. However, the attendees were surprised that doping checks are not performed at the championships of our country. The leaders of the world agency emphasized that it is mainly because of this reason that some athletes of Armenia are disqualified from international tournaments. Not to mention that due to the lack of inspections, athletes who have used doping and are less prepared are sometimes sent to international competitions instead of deserving ones. The heads of the government and state sports institutions of our country should be concerned about this issue, which was discussed at the conference.
In the near future, additional laboratories will be created, which are not yet accredited by the National Academy of Sciences, but will be allowed to carry out testing of athletes’ blood samples only. The laboratories to be established in Bulgaria and Japan will be among the first.
Needless to say that in 2014 Armenia’s anti-doping organization will test our country’s freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers. The international sports federation FILA will finance the process.
Areg Hovhannisyan also added that he was sent to Switzerland with the funds of the National Olympic Committee of Armenia.