Anti-doping policy
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The discussion about transgender athletes has made me think that we also should talk about doping. In both cases, it's difficult because the IUF is not in a (financial) position to enforce strict policies. Still, I think it is worth including a statement in the rulebook. Currently, there is none (!).
I would suggest to state that all substances prohibited by WADA are also prohibited for athletes participating in unicycling competitions.
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/content/what-is-prohibited
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https://www.wada-ama.org/en/content/what-is-prohibited
(hint: to create a link, use the link button above the comment field)
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If we don't have a way to test riders, it is probably not right for us to be specific about what is or is not prohibited. It would be a rule without "teeth" and therefore, not consistent with our other rules.
However, it might be nice to have a general statement saying something like "The International Unicycling Federation does not support any form of medical or pharmaceutical enhancement to improve athletic performance beyond normal good training and nutrition."
That's pretty weak, but perhaps we can build something from there...
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Such a statement doesn't bite either. If someone intends to use doping, they don't need the support of the IUF to do so.
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It doesn't hurt to have a statement in the rulebook. Then if there were a case of suspected doping, testing could potentially be done and there would be a rule to back it up.
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Testing will never be done in the near future. The cost alone is likely to make it not high on priority list. There is so much to consider outside of just "you cant use performance enhancing drugs" that even putting something in the rulebook is probably useless as it will end up as an empty threat that we are unable to act upon.
Where testing is done they will have lengthy documents about proper methods of getting samples and implementing bans etc.
When would we decide to take a sample? Does the event organiser randomly decide because someone beat a record by too much? Does some random unicyclist put in a report suspecting? We would then need a policy for unicon claiming that all athletes competing will give samples if requested (by who?)
Who would take samples?
In regular sport the anti doping agent has to physically watch the person urinating into the jar are we going to pay agents to take our tests for us or is some random event organiser going to?
Do we have a policy in place to ensure that samples are taken properly both A and B samples?
If we paid to get a test done and they test positive to the A sample do we then give them the appeal and choice to get their B sample tested?
Do they have right to an appeal? Who would arbitrate this?
If someone tests positive do they get banned for a certain amount of time? How do we uphold this?
etc etc etc.
We can put in a comment about performance enhancing drugs in the rulebook so that we can potentially test people, however we aren't going to. If we put in a statement about prohibited substances but never test anyone then we will end up with people complaining that we have a drug policy that we don't enforce. Either way you will have an issue.
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I agree that we could put a statement in the rulebook. However, in my point of view if testing is not done anyway, I'm not sure how much it is really needed.
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Steven Hughes did a good description of why the IUF is not likely to be able to enforce anti-doping in the near future. It would be nice to acknowledge that the IUF is aware of doping, and we think it is bad, unhealthy and unnecessary for a sport like unicycling, which is not a career-maker. But any threats we make would be empty. Here's another attempt:
"The International Unicycling Federation is an anti-doping organization, and promotes athletic performance achieved with good training and healthy nutrition."
I'd like to add something a little more specific, but not even sure what is the correct verbiage to describe "doping". It doesn't really matter, since it's a non-rule. The idea is more of a statement of IUF policy.
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In my opinion, anti-doping is way above the sport of unicycling at the moment. As Steve explained, there are so many factors to making anti-doping rules concrete, and unicycling cannot accommodate those yet. If we can't prove something, how is a rule made?
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There's an argument for outlining a policy and saying we're against doping yet still acknowledging that it doesn't really have teeth. That would still cover cases where there's actual knowledge that doping was taken. It'll also ensure that the party area at unicon is "clean" (not that I'm aware there's been problems with drugs before) and that people know they are in a safe environment.
I think there's a bigger discussion about where the sport should go in general – it's clear joining with WADA (or similar) and having doping rules is a requirement if the sport is to grow in certain directions (say, becoming an Olympic sport). It's not clear if most unicyclists want the sport to move in that direction though.
With that said it was asked in one of the Facebook groups why unicycling isn't an olympic sport and someone commented few unicyclists could pass a drug test – stating a policy might change attitudes just a little bit and that might not be so bad.
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The IUF's stated corporate purpose:
To foster awareness of and participation in unicycling as a sport and means of recreation among people of all nations through the organization of international conventions and the development of national unicycling organizations, to promote voluntary international standards for competition toward the achievement of Olympic status for the sport of unicycling; also, to disseminate knowledge and information on all phases of the sport to all interested parties via a newsletter and information service.
Striving for the Olympics is in the IUF's DNA. I think it's more a question of how hard we want to push. Definitely less hard in recent years, as the IOC has pulled back on its speed of adding new sports.
I'm curious why someone on Facebook thinks few unicyclists could pass a drug test? Our sport is not known for doping, but of course there are always "dope users". I agree with Magnus that if we include a well-worded statement, perhaps even mentioning the goal of Olympic status, to inspire riders to aim high.
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I think the IUF should make a statement about this although it is highly unlikely to be enforced. It would be good to include it in the opening ceremonies at UNICON as well (just in one or two sentences) - just to make people aware and appeal to their fairness. Maybe this could be added to the hosts section?
I don't think there is any point of putting specific substances etc. in the rulebook. If we wanted to give people an idea of what this means, we could give them links to further information though. I think many riders aren't even aware of what products are referred to as doping. I saw this for the first time when we had to sign an anti-doping contract for the unicycling federation (Soli) in Germany.
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Note that some countries require various forms of anti-doping policies to be held at their competitions. France has this as does Italy, I believe. I am in favor of having a policy in the rulebook that we can point to.
The more relevant question is if we are requiring ridings to have doctors forms for "prohibited substances". IF that is the case, we need to have a list of what these substances are. That could be a third party list from WADA or someone else.
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A short term way to put something in place might be to work with our upcoming Unicon hosts in Grenoble; see what's required in France, and possibly use that as an example since we'll be "living" it anyway. I wish I remembered more about how that process worked for Italy in 2012. Basically there was a name of a large national sports organization, with a statement of theirs about doping, and that athletes must comply. For me this translated to a handful of Freestyle competitors submitting paperwork showing prescription meds those riders were taking. I duly filed them, and that was that.
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From what I understood France unicyclists came under their national cycling federation and therefore recognized as a "sport" by their country. As part of that they technically can be drug tested by the governing body in their country. I imagine that means they don't pay for testing as it comes under sport testing.
Many countries don't even have a national unicycle organisation let alone recognition as a sport by their country. If we were recognised as a sport in Australia we would fall under the doping rules and I believe the Australian anti-doping authority would "randomly" test people.
Without being part of a government funded testing program we will never be testing anyone.
I see no reason to bother including rules that we wont enforce. We don't have the money, manpower, recognition as a sport to effectively implement a drug policy. If people manage to dope and get away with it for lengthy periods in sports with actual proper WADA programs are we really going to stop anyone (who wants to do it) from doping with our empty policy.
At most I support a single statement such as
"The International Unicycling Federation does not support performance enhancing drugs in sport and strives for clean competition."
It does about as much as any other statement we put in, basically nothing (if someone wants to cheat), but says that morally we don't support it.
Sidenote
@Magnus when someone joked few unicyclists would pass a drug test they meant recreational drugs I am fairly sure.
In regards to Olympics that is unlikely to ever happen (and should it?) based on the fact that we have a huge number of different disciplines and every one would believe they deserve inclusion. They are not going to include freestyle, muni, marathon, slow race, high jump, street, trials, slalom into the olympics. Other sports like skateboarding, climbing have an easier time of including events when they have been newly added.
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I'm also in favour of a statement in principle that we do not support performance enhancing drugs, without getting into specifics. Steve or John's example above would be fine.
If we start having specific lists of banned substances and therapeutic exemptions, we get ourselves into a situation where we may be expected to enforce this.
For competition, we have always had to follow the laws/regulations as required by the host country. We don't need to a specific drug testing policy.
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Steven Hughes named some more places where the national sports federation *might* have a real anti-doping rule in effect if we were to have an event there, similar to Italy in 2012. I suppose we could, along with a general statement, mention that conventions might be bound by the national rules of the hosting country, and if so, those rules would apply for that event.
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There are places where the sport is not organized but there's also a ton of countries where it's organized under some official sports body. Perhaps it make sense to point out that IUF events are sometimes held in partnership with a more general sports organization and that their somewhat stricter rules may apply at events?
As for the comment on Facebook I'm sure they talked about recreational drugs as @Steven mentioned. Regardless they may still be regulated as doping so some people might get in trouble if doping rules start getting enforced (although I don't expect it would be a problem that would persist for more than one unicon).
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I know that we won't take doping tests but that doesn't mean we can't forbid doping in our rules. You said it will be a rule without teeth. But isn't it better to have a rule with no teeth rather than no rule at all? Right now at the moment i feel like doping is allowed and just putting a statement in the rulebook that we don't support doping won't change that. It would be still legal to dope and even if people would know about someone doping that person could still win with that advantage.
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@magnus yes there are countries who technically have stricter rules because of their structure. I'm unsure of how they work in practice though. I've heard a story of one french rider being tested ever, not sure if that has increased by but the tiny number of unicyclists probably red yes the likelihood that one will be randomly tested. Also I'm not sure how international competition compares to national competition. Australia has ASADA but there is also WADA for the world. If we were under the ASADA testing umbrella and had an international competition would our national body test international riders? I'm not so sure. You may still need to be registered with WADA for that.
@Lisa putting the statement in the rulebook still means if you know someone is doping they will still win as you can't prove they have whatever illegal substance is in their system without a test. So yeh a rule we can't test is just as useless.
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And then you have people complaining that why do we have the rule if we don't enforce it
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I totally follow Steven in this topic...
We have a very small community, people in general really want to win for the honor of winning a competition. So I do not see why people would start using doping in our sport. There is no honor in winning while using doping, so if someone would use doping to win and it would be known by the other riders he will not have as much pleasure celebrating his win ;)
That being said, as mentioned above: we will not be able to test the person, so no enforcement on the rule... Just imagine you use doping, I think you know pretty well it is not fair. Adding the rule without the ability to enforce it will not make this person stop using it.
Nonetheless I also don't see a reason not putting in the small sentence Steven wrote above:
"The International Unicycling Federation does not support performance enhancing drugs in sport and strives for clean competition."
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Unenforceable rules: Yup, kind of pointless.
So we must present these ideas in the form of policies, or statements of intent. Just as we say we do these competitions to try to encourage, and find, the best athletes in each discipline (not a rule), we can also say we are against all forms of "doping" (I think there's a nicer label for it). The IUF is not equipped to enforce this, but if an IUF event is being held under the auspices of a larger sports federation that has more power, we defer to that organization.
So in the end, I would like to see an anti-doping statement from the IUF, as well as notice that some unicycle competitions will be covered by the anti-doping rules of those organizations that are part of the governance of sports for those places.
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I support including this statement in the 1B.1 Personal Responsibility section:
"The International Unicycling Federation does not support performance enhancing drugs in sport and strives for clean competition."
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I also support adding this text.
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I agree with adding this statement to 1B.1
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I also agree with adding this statement(1B.1).However it would be enough this text(1B.1) on rulebook at this moment,because we(IUF) don't have the authroty to decide doping,but WADA finally have.And I think organizer could not correspond whole requirements about anti-doping required by WADA now.
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Seems like there is a lot of support of this statement. I've created the proposal.
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With this in the rulebook, can we expect a question what IUF does concretely to strive for clean competition? Would the answer "by having this statement in the Rulebook" be sufficient?
In my opinion, "strive" implies that you have an objective (clean competition) and perform certain actions to achieve that objective. So, what are those actions? If there are none, then even though "strive" is not overly ambitious, it is probably too strong a word. Something like "desire" or "favour" might better describe our position, but it sounds rather bland as a statement by a sports organisation.
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Based on my knowledge of these things, we have about a 0.0% incidence of doping in unicycling. We are just getting ahead of the curve, and sending the message that, just because we are unlikely to be testing, that does not mean we condone it.
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I would be sure that there is some performance enhancing drugs in unicycling. However I don't think it is for the purpose of winning unicycling events and I don't think it is by any of the top riders in the events either.
It more likely exists due to random riders who may also be into serious resistance training and using steroids for the purpose of looking more buff. I doubt anyone is paying for EPO specifically for endurance events or steroids specifically for strength/power events.
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Technically Klass Bil is correct.
If you change "strive" then change it to "desire"
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I am in favour of the proposed text.
I think 'desire' is a little too watered down.
To me, 'strive' is a vague term that does not commit the IUF to action. You can actively look for cheats by drug testing, or you can passively do so (eg if someone is caught in the act by an IUF official, or dobbed in by other competitors). As long as we do not ignore any instance of cheating that is brought to our attention, we are 'striving' for clean competition.
Although the incentive to use performance enhancing drugs is lower in a sport that has little monetary incentive or public recognition, I think it's a bit naive to think it doesn't happen. I've had low level athletes (weekend warriors who would never win anything) tell me they take anabolic hormones...their motivations might be to 'look' more buff, to beat their friends, or just get better at what they do.
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I think it's a good point Ken is making about weekend warriors taking performance enhancing drugs. It can happen anywhere and also we have many riders who may also be doing other sports where the culture or attitude might be different. It doesn't really matter if we believe it happens or not or how we learn about it as long as we can do something about it if it happens.
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This proposal will go into voting phase in 2 days. Can I please get some more opinions on "strive" vs "desire" or any other changes that you think would be absolutely essential?
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I am in favor of "strive".
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Any changes to the proposal will delay voting. From the FAQ:
"If the proposal is changed, must have 3 days of discussion after change before voting can begin."
Strive vs Desire: Either word has positive and negative implications and interpretations to me.
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I prefer strive
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I'm in favour of strive. Ken convinced me.