2021-22 ANNUAL REPORT – ANTI-DOPING

This article forms part of a series of reports which accompany the 2021-22 BF Annual Report.  

Assurance Framework

At the beginning of 2021 a new UK National Anti-Doping Policy was introduced, this is a Government policy that enables the UK to meet the UNESCO Convention against Doping in Sport. The policies and requirements are driven by the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) standards https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/international-standards

UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) then published an Assurance Framework that all NGBs must comply with. We as British Fencing then made sure all our anti-doping policies were compliant with the new standards, also working with and ensuring that the 4 Home Country governing bodies did the same.

With input from the BF Board and Home Countries, BF produced an education strategy to cover all the requirements for this.

Specific activities in 2021-22 included the:

• Appointment of a Board Director with responsibility for anti-doping (Pat Aiyeunro)
• Appointment of an anti-doping lead (Neil Brown) to oversee the assurance framework and work with the BF Chief Medical Officer (Clare Halsted)
• Creation of an education strategy, to include the four Home Countries
• Setting of standards and mandating anti-doping education for all coaches and athlete support personnel (ASP) who work with our Athlete Development Programme (ADP) and travel to international events. All coaches will need to complete the UKAD course Coach Clean and upload a certificate to their membership database
• Running bi-monthly education sessions, open to all British Fencing members and those that support their fencing (including personal trainers, parents etc). All the fencers selected for the Commonwealth Championships in August 2022 were invited to attend. Example https://www.britishfencing.com/anti-doping-education-community/
• Anti-Doping education for parents, Jan 2022 https://www.britishfencing.com/anti-doping-education-adp-parents/
• Mary Cohen is now a qualified Educator for British Fencing, she was also elected to the Board of British Fencing in October 2021 and retained her place on the European Fencing Confederation (EFC) Medical Commission.

Other ongoing activities:

Website and Communication – We have maintained our website with the latest information from the (World Anti-Doping Agency) WADA and (UK Anti-Doping) UKAD, see all the information you need as an athlete, parent, coach, or other person involved in fencing here https://www.britishfencing.com/policy-zone/anti-doping-2/. We have posted several online news posts as we update our policies or need to remind people of existing policies.
We have been active on social media, with reminders and information relevant to all members of BF and all those who support them.

Training and Education
As an adaptation to Covid restrictions we continued with delivering all our education sessions online. We ran a session for ADP fencers with an attendance of 65. We also ran a session for parents of ADP fencers, which had some excellent feedback.
We shared a series of webinars put delivered by the (International Testing Agency) ITA for the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime (FIE).
We shared information relevant to our Senior fencers and are in contact with their support teams: coaches and other athlete support personnel (ASP). We shared various updates with all ADP fencers at intervals through out the year.
Anti-doping education is a core part of the Diploma in Sporting Excellence (DiSE) syllabus so forms part of the ADP athlete education plan.

Anti-Doping Educator CPD
Members of our educator team have done multiple workshops and training webinars with UKAD and the ITA. These have looked at latest updates, the changes to the prohibited list that are published every year, discussions with experts in anti-doping scientific and education research, and some online session delivery training.

Coach Development
As part of our commitment to supporting Clean Sport, we made it a requirement for all coaches travelling to international events or working with the ADP to complete UKAD’s online course Coach Clean.
We have added the certificate upload as a field on the membership database so we will be able to monitor these and send reminders automatically when they are due. Please see the Coach Clean course (for coaches working at all levels) and the Anti-Doping Advisor course (for anyone supporting an athlete in any role) on the UKAD eLearning portal here https://www.ukad.org.uk/news/ukad-moves-elearning-platforms-new-and-improved-clean-sport-hub-qa

In April 2022 it was confirmed that British Fencing is now fully compliant with the UKAD Assurance Framework.

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