– Local athletes should have no fear of WADA’s whereabouts clause since they do not use performance enhancing drugs says top sporting officials
Guyana has signed on to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and as such this country’s athletes face the likelihood of being tested by the organization in and out of competitions.
“We signed with WADA before the last Olympics,” Guyana Olympic Association president K. Juman Yassin told Stabroek Sport on Monday.
The World Anti Doping Agency has been in the forefront of the fight against the use of illegal substances in Olympic sport.
“Well we have signed so basically we are adhering to the code. Our athletes can be tested in and out of competition,” Yassin, the head of this country’s national Olympic association told Stabroek Sport.
Recently five members of the Jamaican team for this month’s world athletic championships tested positive for a banned substance.
The five members were immediately pulled from the squad by the Jamaican athletic officials.
“We won’t have those problems,” Yassin declared adding that local athletes do not use performance enhancing drugs.
He however revealed that our top athletes namely Marian Burnett and Aliann Pompey are
tested whenever they participate in competitions abroad.
“If they want to clean up the sport and they want WADA who are recognized for their testing to do so they would need to sign the code and adhere to it,” he declared.
Drug testing
Yassin said no Guyana athlete has ever tested positive for a banned substance.
He also disclosed that there was a regional body of WADA but said that Guyana had not fully signed on because of the cost factor which is about US$3000 dollars a year.
“We will be training some more persons in Guyana who can take the samples just like they did in the World Cup cricket here,” he said.
Yassin said local athletes do not use performance enhancing drugs.
“They know what to use there is a list of prohibited substances which has been forwarded to clubs for time to time.”
And president of the Guyana Cricket Board Chetram Singh said he believes that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is a signatory of WADA.
“To the best of my knowledge West Indies have signed on to WADA,” Singh told Stabroek Sport in an invited comment.
Singh explained that the WICB was a separate entity adding that the situation with the West Indies players with respect to testing was different from that of players in India.
Top Indian cricketers are unhappy with a whereabouts clause in an amended WADA code which was implemented by the International Cricket Council on January 1 this year.
The clause which the players have rejected require cricketers to reveal before every quarter details of their whereabouts for an hour every day to facilitate out of competition testing.
Singh said the situation with the WICB was a bit different in that the Indian players are not represented by a union.
The West Indies players are represented by the West Indies Players Association which is a member of the Federation of International Cricketers Association (FICA).
Singh said the Indian cricketers are represented by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
Singh said however that West Indies cricketers are still liable to be tested.
“You are liable to be tested. Look at during the Stanford tournament they were tested,” he said.
Some 11 Indian players including Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni claim security concerns with respect to the whereabouts clause of WADA and has rejected the clause.The BCCI has backed its players and is contemplating its next move.
