By Greg McKenna, Head of the Biathlon Integrity Unit

In yesteryear, and still to an extent today, the fight against doping has been seen, somewhat simplistically, as athletes facing a urine or blood test during competition to ascertain the potential presence of a prohibited substance. Yet, as with so much in the world in which we live, things are not quite that simple. And that’s why, as the anti-doping movement has grown, so too has the number of tools in our toolbox to detect, deter and even prevent doping. 

Out-of-competition testing, intelligence and investigations, whistleblowing, the Athlete Biological Passport are all examples of new features in anti-doping’s toolbox, yet there is one significant trend that we in anti-doping and sports integrity have become increasingly aware of, and that’s the fact that often behind a doped athlete is a support member, someone in a position of power – be it a coach, doctor, physician or agent – coercing an athlete into doping. 

And it’s with this emerging trend, and increasing evidence that athletes rarely dope alone, that the WADA Prohibited Association rule was implemented into the World Anti-Doping Code back in 2015. In simple terms, the Prohibited Association rule makes it an offence for an athlete to associate with a person ‘in a professional or sport-related capacity’ if you know they are serving a doping ban. In terms of what ‘associating’ with them could look like, well it could, amongst other things, mean receiving coaching or training, obtaining medical or nutritional or any other type of advice.  By associating with a banned individual, you could run the risk of a two-year ban, or even more if ‘aggravating circumstances’ are at play (for example, a second or third offence). 

To breach the Prohibited Association rule, you must have been given notice (of the person’s banned status and the potential consequences of prohibited association) by your National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO),  Integrity Unit (such as the BIU), National Governing Body (NGB), WADA or another Anti-Doping Organization that has jurisdiction over you. And then, after receiving that notice, you must have continued to associate with the banned person in a professional or sport-related capacity. Yet, even if you haven’t received notice, there’s potential that you could be breaching another Anti-Doping Rule Violation, not to mention harm your reputation. So, it’s important as a biathlete, you get to grips with this important rule. 

To help with Prohibited Association, WADA has compiled a list – which it updates on a quarterly basis – of banned individuals. This list, however, is not definitive as it may not be fully up to date and it is not exhaustive, so our advice to biathletes is to check in with they NADO or us at the Biathlon Integrity Unit if you want clarification. 

It’s important to keep good company in your sport, to stay on the right side of the rules. Support members can be a great influence on a biathlete, but in a position of power they can also adversely influence you and take you down the wrong path – this is something all biathletes will want to avoid. 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch as together, we can play our part in ensuring a better biathlon. 

Leading biathletes Anastasiya Merkushyna (Ukraine), Julian Eberhard (Austria) and Sebastian Samuelsson (Sweden) have today begun their terms as BIU Athlete Ambassadors for integrity matters. The three ambassadors will serve their roles supporting the Biathlon Integrity Unit, as part of the broader International Biathlon Union (IBU) Ambassador Programme which – covering Sustainability, Gender Equality and Integrity – officially launched today.

The BIU’s goal is to build trust and confidence in the sport, with a mandate that covers anti-doping, anti-corruption, safeguarding, betting and match fixing – all areas where the ambassadors can truly make their mark. 

In their roles as Athlete Ambassadors, Merkushyna, Eberhard and Samuelsson will have the opportunity to educate, motivate and lead by example on integrity-related matters and to help the BIU spread its positive message at an exciting time for the sport.

Amongst the ambassadors’ responsibilities will be: regularly engaging with the BIU to share ideas and opinions; connecting with other athletes to educate and increase awareness of the BIU’s role; disseminating integrity-related information, speaking at events, seminars and workshops; and, joining educational training sessions. 

“I see it as my responsibility as a top-level athlete to commit to different topics related to my sport. Integrity matters are very important to me and being highly critical of the issues we have in that area, I also wanted to be part of the solution,” said multiple Olympic and World Champion and IBU Athlete Ambassador, Sebastian Samuelsson.

“The BIU is delighted to have Anastasiya, Julian and Sebastian join the Athlete Ambassador Programme for integrity matters. This is not only a huge chance for the athletes to engage more closely with the Unit, but it’s a great opportunity for the Unit to forge a closer link with our number one audience: the biathletes,” said BIU Head, Greg McKenna.

“Our three new ambassadors will act as the bridge between biathletes and the Unit, and ensure we have our finger on the pulse of athlete opinion across our sport. This programme will also ensure that biathletes have a voice at the BIU’s decision-making table, which is essential for the longevity of our sport. This is an exciting step forward for the Unit and all that can be achieved if we work together with biathletes,” he added.

As with the athlete ambassadors across the Sustainability and Gender Equality programmes, Merkushyna, Eberhard and Samuelsson will serve two year terms, with the opportunity to extend the duration if they wish.

The Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) is pleased to announce that it has collaborated with the International Testing Agency (ITA) to host a series of Webinars on Anti-Doping Education during the Biathlon off-season. 

The series of four 90-minute webinars, which will be available for biathletes and their support personnel via video conferencing platform Zoom, will take place on successive Tuesdays in late May and early June. The announcement of the sessions follows on from the ITA-held webinars that took place in January and February on the topics of Doping Control and how to navigate the anti-doping system.

This new four-session series will focus on: Registered Testing Pool athletes; anti-doping rights and responsibilities for all athletes; medications and supplements; and a dedicated session for coaches. 

All sessions will be interactive, offering quiz questions and plenty of opportunity for athletes and support personnel to ask questions and discuss the topics in real time. Following each session, a PDF slide presentation will be sent to all participants as a reference point and reminder of the key learnings. 

“The BIU is delighted to continue its association with the ITA to bring biathletes and their support members the very best in anti-doping education. Education is today one of the most significant, and continually growing, tenets of the global anti-doping rules, and so we believe it’s right we dedicate more time to ensuring biathletes and their teams have every opportunity to understand the rules, why they are in place and why doping is not the right course of action. We look forward to delivering these latest webinars alongside the ITA this summer,” said BIU Head, Greg McKenna.

Webinars will be provided in English with simultaneous translation in Russian. 

The Webinar sessions are scheduled as follows:

◦ Tuesday 18 May, 17.00 CET – Special Registered Testing Pool athletes session

◦ Tuesday 25 May, 17.00 CET – Anti-Doping Rights and responsibilities

◦ Tuesday 1 June, 17.00 CET – Medications and supplements

◦ Tuesday 8 June, 17.00 CET – Coaches session

To register, biathletes and others should visit the relevant link above.

The Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) welcomes the recent decision of the Anti-Doping Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS ADD), which determined that Mr Timofey Lapshin committed an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) through his use of a prohibited substance and/or method on 21 December 2013, in breach of Article 2.2 of the 2012 IBU ADR. 

In its Award, the CAS ADD, which serves as the Disciplinary Tribunal under the new IBU Constitution,  decided that Mr Lapshin is to serve a twelve (12) month period of ineligibility, with credit given for the period of provisional suspension served since 23 September 2020. 

This procedure follows an investigation into information obtained by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) into the Moscow Laboratory’s Information Management System database.  In 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency were provided with information, which identified that Mr Lapshin had used a prohibited substance, during a 10km sprint at the Izhevsk Rifle event in Russia.

All competitive results obtained by Mr Timofey Lapshin at the 10km sprint in Izhevsk on 21 December 2013 are disqualified with all resulting consequences (including forfeiture of medals, points and prizes). 

The BIU stated, “In our pursuit of clean Biathlon, we will ensure that all potential violations are thoroughly investigated.   Those responsible for compromising the integrity of our sport will be brought to justice”.  

The CAS ADD decision may be appealed by both parties involved to the CAS Appeals Arbitration Division within 21 days from receipt of the final decision.

The first Play True Day since the the Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) began its full operations takes place today across the world of sport. 

Since 2014, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the clean sport movement worldwide have celebrated Play True Day, to mark the clean sport cause and raise its profile among ath-letes, sports fans and other stakeholders.

With last year’s Play True Day campaign reaching over 50 million people worldwide, the BIU is pleased to again be joining this ever-growing calendar event to support fairness and honesty in sport. This year’s theme is “What does Play True mean to you?” and so, over the course of the day we will be releasing a series of posts asking biathletes and other members of the biath-lon community to share what ‘playing true’ means for them. 

You are encouraged to be as innovative and creative as possible, to create ‘What does Play True mean to you?’ Visuals to share on Instagram, Twitter and other social channels, based on your specific country and language. Don’t forget to use the hashtags #PlayTrue and #PlayTrueDay with your posts, and if you want to follow the campaign in real time you can do so by visiting WADA’s Play True Day Social Media Wall. 

“The BIU is delighted to be part of this growing occasion that celebrates the sporting values that we cherish. At the heart of our mission to protect the integrity of sport is values. Pro-tecting those values for the good of the overwhelming majority – the clean athletes – is why we exist, and so it’s only right that we mark all that is good about our movement alongside WADA, National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs), sports federations, athletes and fans. We encourage everyone to take part,” said BIU Head, Greg McKenna.

The first international biathlon season with the Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) in place has now drawn to a close, with the BMW IBU World Cup Biathlon ending yesterday in Oestersund, Sweden.

Prior to the 2020/2021 season’s start (in November 2020), the BIU was focussed on planning for a rigorous integrity programme. Despite the Covid-19 global pandemic, the BIU, determined to ensure fairness would prevail, looked at a more adaptable and intelligence-led anti-doping testing plan. Numerous difficulties such as national lockdown rules and biosecurity measures were overcome in this essential pre-season planning phase.

On the ground, the BIU put its energies into fact finding and assessing the suitability of facilities to conduct the anti-doping programme – such as anti-doping stations – and also the performance of testing service providers such as National Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs).

Where possible under Covid-19 restrictions, the BIU sought to engage face to face with athletes and support personnel (and where not possible, via virtual sessions) to better understand their needs, and also to build relationships that would help better protect biathletes’ rights. As a result of this work performed under challenging conditions, the BIU identified many areas of improvement, not least ways and means of ensuring greater visibility for the BIU. Above all, it highlighted the importance of closer engagement for the BIU with athletes and coaches.

Given the recent introduction of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) new International Standard for Education Education (ISE), it is clear that education has become one of the priority areas for the fight for clean sport. The BIU prioritised the importance of education throughout its debut season by delivering Education programmes online. The BIU partnered with the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology’s (UMIT) Institute for Sport Alpine Medicine and Health Tourism to build and implement a comprehensive clean sport education programme; and to discover what target groups need so that the BIU can provide tailor-made education tools for them. By athletes feeding back on what information they require and how best they can receive such information, the BIU will be able to perform more effective education in future.

The season saw a high number of questions and debate surrounding levels of anti-doping testing. Although some factors make it difficult to draw a direct comparison to the 2019/2020 season, the BIU has highlighted that, for example, this season has seen fewer competitions take place (20% fewer competitions) whilst there have still been 88% of anti-doping samples collected compared to the previous season. The BIU has also stressed the importance of its modern and progressive anti-doping programme being seen more broadly than solely on testing numbers, with the efficacy of its programme being viewed through the prism of its more holistic strategy focussed on testing but also investigations, intelligence gathering, whistleblowing and education. 

During its inaugural season, the BIU has also been developing relationships with NADOs, other sports integrity bodies and stakeholders committed to promoting clean sport. This is something we will continue to do, in order to share best practice and advance the clean sport cause. It is by learning from each other, and upping each others’ game in the anti-doping movement, that biathletes’ rights will be better protected than ever before. 

The BIU is alert to the fact that some individuals involved in cheating are using substances that may not be detectable using current testing methods. To combat this, the BIU has begun a long-term storage project, which has, and will continue to, see samples collected within anti-doping testing retained in a secure environment. As new sample analysis technologies become available, the BIU will use these new methods to test samples in long-term storage. This is yet another method the BIU is employing to keep sport clean and protect biathletes’ rights. 

As the BIU embarks on preparation for the second biathlon season since its launch, it’s important to advise biathletes, coaches, other support personnel and the entire biathlon community that our work is far broader than anti-doping. As the BIU grows, and as restrictions following the global pandemic start to ease, our efforts will increasingly focus on other threats to the integrity of our sport; our role is a broad one, after all, focussed on not just combatting doping but also on combatting competition fixing, illegal betting, fraud and on safeguarding biathletes. 

As always, if you want to share information or if you want to learn more about what the Unit does, we encourage you to contact the BIU at: [email protected] 

The Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) can confirm that the Latvian biathlete Andrejs Rastorgujevs has been charged and provisionally suspended from competition due to a potential Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) in the form of a whereabouts failure according to Article 2.4 IBU ADR.

The BIU has taken the decision to provisionally suspend Mr. Rastorgujevs as a result of three filing failures within twelve months under the Whereabouts Rules as defined in the World Anti-Doping Code. 

The BIU is strongly committed to upholding international Whereabouts Rules, under which it is the responsibility of the athlete to correctly file and detail their whereabouts so that they can be located for out-of-competition testing at any given time. Under the strict liability provisions of the World Anti-Doping Code, it is the athlete’s responsibility to file correct and detailed whereabouts, and, if not, athletes will be held responsible. 

The athlete now has until 31 March 2021 to respond to the charge. In order to protect the integrity of this ongoing case, the BIU will make no further comment at the current time. 

At the heart of the Biathlon Integrity Unit’s (BIU) mission is to restore trust and confidence to the sport of biathlon. To achieve that, we are focussed on addressing a number of different areas in our sport, which range from anti-doping to safeguarding, and from diversity issues to anti-corruption. 

It is the latter issue, anti-corruption, that often biathletes and other individuals within the sport are least familiar with. The BIU wants to remind participants within our sport that they must adhere to certain anti-corruption obligations that prevent any kind of result manipulation. Biathletes can be found guilty of corruption against the sport through actions such as match fixing and betting; and so, to avoid falling foul of the rules, it’s important to be familiar with what you must not do. 

As it relates to match fixing, this involves not:

• Fixing or improperly influencing the result, progress, outcome, conduct or any other aspect of any  Biathlon competition;
• Seeking, accepting, offering or agreeing to accept any bribe to fix or improperly influence the result,  progress, outcome, conduct or any other aspect of any Biathlon competition;
• Intentionally failing to perform to the best of your abilities in any Biathlon competition.

As it relates to betting, this involves not:

• Placing, accepting, laying or otherwise entering into any bet in relation to the result, progress, outcome, conduct or any other aspect of any Biathlon competition;
• Instructing or enticing another party to enter into any bet in relation to the result, progress, outcome, conduct or any other aspect of any Biathlon competition;
• Using ‘inside information’ for betting purposes;
• Disclosing any ‘inside information’ to any party for betting purposes;
• Providing, offering, giving, requesting or receiving any gift that risks undermining public confidence in the integrity of any Biathlon competition.

As is the case with all integrity issues, we encourage biathletes and other members of the community to familiarise themselves with the rules (see Chapter C of the IBU Integrity Code), and don’t forget if you have any questions to get in touch with the BIU: [email protected]