Leading the fight against Doping: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Welcome everyone to the first post of the page. In this post we are going to talk about the organization that leads the fight against doping worldwide: The WADA.

As we can find in his website:

"The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established in 1999 as an international independent agency composed and funded equally by the sport movement and governments of the world. Its key activities include scientific research, education, development of anti-doping capacities, and monitoring of the World Anti Doping Code (Code) – the document harmonizing anti-doping policies in all sports and all countries."

The WADA, was created after the events happened in cycling in the summer of 1998., when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) deciced to convene a World Conference on doping getting together all parts involved in the fight against doping. In this way ocurred the First World Conference on Doping in Sport held, in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 1999, producing the Lausanne Declaration on Doping in Sport. Pursuant the terms of this document, the WADA was founded in November 10, 1999, in Lausane (Switzerland). 

As we said previously, the WADA born trough the accordance between the sport movement and the international governments. This agreement have a important common point that is known as the "World Anti-Doping Code". The WADA define the Code in the following way:

"The Code is the fundamental and universal document upon which the World Anti-Doping Program is based. Its purpose is to advance the anti-doping effort through universal harmonization of core anti-doping elements. It is intended to be specific enough to achieve complete harmonization on issues where uniformity is required, yet general enough in other areas to permit flexibility on how agreed-upon anti-doping principles are implemented. The Code has been drafted giving consideration to the principles of proportionality and human rights".

On the other hand, the WADA,  every year make public "the list of prohibited substances and methods", which is valid for the whole year(from January 1 to December 31). This document classify the ilegal substances and methods in three categories:

- Prohibited at all times (in and out of competition)
- Prohibited in competition.
- Prohibited in particular sports.

Moreover, into these categories, the prohibited substances and methods are classified in groups according his roles. 

To sum up, it seems clear that with only 19 years is an agency relativalety young in comparison with the majority of sports and even nowadays some countries do not cooperate completely with this organization. Definitely appear that much work remains to be done to achieve a cleaner sport.

This is only a short summary about the main things which are important to know about the WADA. In following post we will talking deeper about the code and the prohibited list.