ITA conducts anti-doping education activities during WBSC U-12 Mixed Softball World Cup

Invited by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the International Testing Agency (ITA) conducted two anti-doping presentations on 7 December, for Athletes and Athlete Support Personnel (ASP) participating in the WBSC U-12 Mixed Softball World Cup. This was the first time that the WBSC had conducted anti-doping event-based education in conjunction with the ITA.

All five participating teams in the WBSC U-12 Mixed Softball World Cup attended the educational activity, with a total 80 athletes, eight coaches and 10 officials and event organisers participating in the educational presentation. ITA Educator Nikki Hamblin, an Olympian with considerable experience in anti-doping, led the interactive sessions. 

Considering the young age of athletes participating at the event, the focus of the presentation was on sport values and the learning objectives were for the athletes to:

• Understand the meaning of fair play
• Understand what respect means in sport
• Understand what equity and inclusion mean in sport
• Understand how these values relate to clean sport
• Be able to make a commitment to how an athlete will play the game

At the end of the presentation, participating young athletes were given a certificate for attending a ‘values for clean sport’ education session. To strengthen their understanding of clean sport values, all athletes could add their personal commitment statement to the certificate.

In June, the WBSC extended its agreement with the ITA, placing new emphasis on information-sharing, investigations, long-term sample storage and the confidential reporting of doping offences through Reveal - ITA's reporting platform.

The ITA and the WBSC have been collaborating since January 2020 with an increasing degree of delegation to the ITA for independent management of different areas of its anti-doping program over the past three years.