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The battle against sports doping saw a record number of whistleblowers come forward in 2024, according to the latest figures released on Tuesday.
UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) was handed 211 reports of suspected doping misconduct by its intelligence and investigations team.
The reports covered 30 sports in 2024, with the Paris Olympics at the heart of a packed sporting calendar.
The latest figure extends a trend with reports increasing year-on-year since 2020.
UKAD confirmed it had received 184 in 2023, 110 in 2022 and 75 in 2021, with the latest figure an increase of almost 15 percent.
Sport’s battle against doping has seen US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) state that it “fully supports” the US government’s decision to withhold a $3.6m (£2.8m) payment to the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) following the organisation’s handling of a major doping scandal.
UKAD launched the ‘Protect Your Sport’ initiative in November 2020 to encourage whistleblowers to report anonymously.
UKAD’s head of intelligence and investigations Mario Theophanous said: “It’s important to UKAD that athletes and the sporting community feel safe talking to us, and that we normalise the reporting of doping in sport.
“One of the main reasons that we release these reporting numbers is to show individuals who are unsure or uncertain about reporting that you’re not alone – there are others like you who want to protect the integrity of their sport.”
UKAD has launched an anonymous SMS and WhatsApp service for reporting suspected misconduct.
Theophanous added: “The service allows our investigators to reply to the person reporting in real time, gathering the necessary evidence we need to conduct our investigations.
“We hope to encourage other individuals who may have information but fear reporting it, to take the decisive action and raise their concerns to ‘Protect Your Sport’ anonymously.”
