Teamwork and fair play, sport’s collective responsibility

This article was originally published by UK Sport on 12 May 2023.

Winning well matters because it goes right to the heart of not just our own values at UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), but also wider sporting values linked to fair play and equal opportunity.

This wider principle of Sporting Integrity is something UKAD shares with all clean athletes, sporting bodies and the public. We want and need sport to be trusted, believed in and to be fair.

I’ve been at UKAD for just over a year now and as I reflect back there are many stand out moments. One favourite memory was being trackside at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games to meet those on the frontline of testing in clean sport, our Doping Control Personnel (DCP).

Testing and education are vital twin pillars of UKAD’s approach to clean sport. At the prevention end, education delivered by UKAD’s network of National Trainers and Educators aims to raise awareness of the issues and cost of doping, whether intentional or by mistake.

Quite simply and starkly, cheating ruins the lives of not just the individual, their families and their sport, but ripples out into society more widely as a collective sense of loss, and often, shame. UKAD is much more than the anti-doping ‘police’.

The UK’s four nations have long histories steeped in huge sporting pride, and passion, integrity, fair play and clean play are essential for a healthy and happy society.

The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games summed up that national spirit and from UKAD’s point of view it involved the whole organisation working for clean sport. It helped me see our values in action.

Passion, Integrity, Collaboration and Excellence are central to how we work, and through the Games I saw the entire team pulling together. I was so proud to see the full programme of our work being delivered with such dedication, conviction and commitment.

Another major success has been the implementation of UKAD’s Assurance Framework. This initiative is a partnership model delivered through UK sporting bodies to ensure we all fulfil our obligations, roles and responsibilities to be compliant within national anti-doping regulations and international frameworks.

Across the year we saw organisations starting to work through the steps and to align to share best practice and expertise. In the Autumn we hosted a series of seminars and discussions to further collaborate and share experiences. It marked a tipping point, shifting from a fragmented landscape to a set of sporting bodies really starting to pull together and feel the benefits of working in partnership.

We have moved from a minimum standard to an exciting position of how can we all work together. We have also made an ongoing commitment to do it all again year on year.

A further major opportunity for us to reinforce the work we do around collective responsibility in clean sport is Clean Sport Week, taking place this year from 22-26 May. Our focus is on teamwork and fair play.

Collective responsibility is so important as we all want to do what we can to support our athletes to do the right thing. We want every athlete to be the very best they can be and to do that by being true to their very best selves – with no performance enhancement through prohibited substances or methods.

Many elite athletes and those travelling on that pathway are young people and so will be supported by their parents, their carers, and their coaches. In addition they may have medical officers, therapists, nutritionists, the list runs on…  

Many people are part of the support team around the athlete to help them succeed and to be the very best version of themselves.

But ultimately under UKAD’s rules which adopt the World Anti-Doping Code, strict liability means it is the athlete who is personally responsible and if they mess up it’s the athlete who will pay the greatest cost in the form of a potential rule violation, a ban and public censure.

It can end careers in their prime. So working together becomes utterly critical to ensure that everyone within that entourage understands what strict liability means and that they understand their own roles and responsibilities in supporting the athlete.

To provide an obvious example, for a nutritionist, this collective responsibility means keeping a very clear record of supplements provided to that athlete in any given circumstance. For a medical officer it is being clear about checking medicines and the Therapeutic Use Exemption process.

So much responsibility can sit heavy on the shoulders of the young athlete so the team needs to pull together, be crystal clear on anti-doping responsibilities and support their athlete to be 100% clean and – as our education campaign distils it - 100% Me.

Our tried and tested educational programme, hand in hand with all else we do in areas including intelligence and testing, means UKAD is already in a very strong place to help the athlete and their teams, but Clean Sport Week provides a bright spotlight on the issues and is a timely reminder of just how important our work is.

We want to foster and support a sporting landscape enriched by the belief in winning well. Please do join us at a range of events and opportunities we have scheduled across Clean Sport Week to help ensure we are all working as teams to help deliver a sporting world where athletes can be proud to be striving to be the best they can be and ‘100% Me’.