Team Sunweb have announced that they are to initiate a new independent anti-doping program for their Men’s, Women’s and Development Programs.
The program is run and coordinated by Dopingautoriteit, the national anti-doping agency of The Netherlands who will cooperate with the national anti-doping agencies of various other countries, in order to implement the international program.
The announcement was made today at the 2018 launch of Team Sunweb in Berlin.
The program from Dopingautoriteit involves urine and blood tests for the team’s Men, Women and Development programs, as well as analysis of the results. The tests are carried out with the exact same standards of those of WADA and CADF and the tests are made available to WADA and CADF.
Herman Ram, CEO of Dopingautoriteit: “This new program consists of out-of-competition urine and blood test, and interpretation of the test results. The program is fully compliant with WADA standards. This new program is completely independent; the team does not indicate when, where and which athlete will be tested. Both Team Sunweb’s male and female athletes are subject to the exact same regime; they are all tested out of competition, unannounced, and both the men and women athletes are located for testing via the ADAMS systems of which all of the team’s riders submit their whereabouts. When a violation of the doping rules is detected, the standard procedure will be applied.
“Dopingautoriteit is pleased to see that Team Sunweb has included its Development Program, a team consisting of young talents, in this regime. This is the first Development Program which is subject to testing of this nature which is something significant. The future of the sport always is very much connected with the next generation of athletes. Besides the detection and monitoring tools, it allows these young athletes to establish a series of biological values at a young age, which will remain a reference for their values later on in their careers.
“Dopingautoriteit considers getting the most talented athletes acquainted to an important element of the life of a professional athlete during their pre-professional years very important and considers the commitment to the obligations of the anti-doping regime, as an important educational value, which may help to prevent the use of prohibited substances. Through this regime a new standard is set.”
Ram concluded: “We can only encourage that this example will be followed by other stakeholders, which invest in professional elite sports and in talent development.”
Sunweb Group Chief Commercial Officer, Tim Van den Bergh: “For a company investing in professional sports there are only two options in regards to anti-doping.
One benefits from the beauty and great impact of the sport and abandons the team on the day there’s a doping case. The other chooses not to ignore that a sport is not better or worse than society. This means that alongside all of those with good intentions, there are always a few individuals that choose to do the wrong thing.
“A company that takes responsibility for the sport and for the team, means that they must put efforts into protecting those who choose to do the right thing by participating clean in sports. The best protection is to increase the efforts that go into detecting those who perform their sport with undesirable morals in terms of anti-doping.
“Within this context, detecting a ‘positive case’ is not only something regrettable, but is a victory for clean athletes and for the sport of cycling. Sunweb’s fundamental view of their responsibility towards the fight against doping is to ensure the creation of a fair and level playing field for athletes, which is what the spirit of sport is all about, and to protect the future of cycling. Detecting those who undermine the system is a win for the sport, according to Sunweb, even if ultimately one of Team Sunweb’s own riders were ever to be detected.”
Van den Bergh concluded: “We hope that other companies that invest in sports will follow in our footsteps in providing extra funds towards strengthening the independent anti-doping efforts.”
