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Athlete vulnerability

A podcast interview with Cornelia Blank, professor and deputy head of the Institute for Sports Medicine, Alpine Medicine and Health Tourism at the Private University for Health Sciences and Health Technology UMIT TIROL in Hall in Tirol, Austria.

In our latest podcast interview we spoke to Cornelia Blank about athletes’ vulnerability, in particular to doping. What is athlete vulnerability, what influences it, how can coaches and others in authority spot the signs and how can we make athletes less vulnerable?

The podcast echoes a session on athlete vulnerability led by Cornelia during the IBU Academy Coaches Course Level 2 in Oberhof on 23 to 27 September, 2023. Twenty coaches from various countries participated, many of them extremely experienced national team coaches.

With a background in health sciences and psychology, Cornelia’s research focuses on prevention and health promotion in and by means of sport, giving her a unique insight into the topic.

Listen to the full interview here.

Summer of Respect outreach at the Summer Biathlon World Championships

The BIU rounded off its Summer of Respect campaign with a three-day outreach programme for athletes and support personnel at the Summer Biathlon World Championships in Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia.

The aim was to provide information and education on respect in biathlon at the Championships between 24 and 26 August, 2023.

The Summer of Respect campaign was initiated to help ensure the integrity of Biathlon by encouraging biathletes to show respect for the things that matter most in our sport.

Respect has been defined as: ‘Treating others as you would want to be treated. This reflects the qualities of being polite, kind, courteous and tolerant of others’ views, cultures and beliefs’ (https://www.i-value.eu/toolkit.html). It also includes respect for yourself and your body, for other people, for rules and regulations, for sport and the environment, according to the International Olympic Committee.

The outreach programme included a quiz and two other activities in relation to respect:

A ‘tree’ poster on which athletes and support personnel could write down what respect means to them;
A social media challenge, inviting athletes and support personnel to video themselves talking about their own experiences of respect in biathlon, with the best stories winning a prize.

The BIU was delighted at the high level of interest shown by athletes and their support personnel, with more than100 individuals participating in the activities. “Respect the people around you and treat everyone the way you want to be treated” – this is what sums up the athletes’ opinion.

IBU Summer Biathlon World Championships, sprint men, Brezno-Osrblie (SVK)

Although the main topic of the outreach programme was respect, everyone was welcome to ask any questions about other integrity issues, such as anti-doping and safeguarding, at the BIU booth.

The quiz can be found here.

Combating abuse in sport

The BIU spoke to Allison Forsyth, a former Alpine skier who was herself a victim, about safeguarding and Safe Sport.

She discussed her own experience of abuse, how the culture of sport, with frequent travel, can make athletes vulnerable and whether sports organisations are getting better at tackling it.

She also spoke of the need for change in the culture of hiring coaches, and how victims might not even know they’re being abused.

Listen to the full interview here.

Meet our new Athlete Ambassador!

A podcast interview with our newly-appointed Athlete Ambassador Lovro Planko

In the second in our series of podcast interviews with the BIU’s two new athlete ambassadors. Slovenia’s Lovro Planko spoke to us about why becoming a BIU athlete ambassador enables him to give back to the sport.

He also told us how he avoids forgetting to register his whereabouts and advised young athletes facing their first anti-doping test not to be nervous, and relax!

And – as the BIU launches its Summer of Respect campaign – Lovro told us what respect in biathlon means to him.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Meet our new Athlete Ambassador!

The BIU has just appointed two new athlete ambassadors. We spoke first to USA’s Chloe Levins about her motivation in becoming a BIU athlete ambassador, about the role of the athlete ambassador and what athlete ambassadors can do to help to ensure the integrity of biathlon.

Chloe discussed with us the importance of athletes using our hotline to report any wrongdoing (e.g., breaches of the safeguarding rules, doping and match-fixing), her research into the history of how performance-enhancing techniques were utilized in Olympic sports as leverage for political power and what golf can teach other sports about honesty and integrity.

Click here to listen to the interview – you don’t want to miss it!

BIU launches Summer of Respect

The BIU is launching Summer of Respect, a campaign aimed at helping to ensure the integrity of Biathlon by encouraging biathletes to show respect for the things that matter most in our sport.

Through the Summer of Respect campaign, the BIU will raise awareness of what it means to show respect in the context of Biathlon’s integrity rules. The IBU’s Safeguarding policy says: “IBU recognises that every member of the Biathlon family […] requires, commands, deserves and has a right to respect, safety, dignity, welfare and protection.”

Athletes should respect:

The rules (as set out in the IBU Integrity Code and other rule books, including the World Anti-Doping Code)
Coaches
Teammates and opponents
Spectators
Officials
Themselves (self-respect)

The Summer of Respect campaign will comprise a range of initiatives, including regular social media posts and an athlete outreach stand at the Summer Biathlon World Championships in Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia on 24-27 August.

Some great examples of respect in biathlon include:

During the COVID epidemic, positive tests in the Japanese coaching team and the quarantining of close contacts meant that Japanese athletes had no one to help them during the zeroing of a men’s relay race in Oberhof. US coach Armin Auchentaller stepped in to help by assisting Japanese athletes as well as US athletes, enabling them to compete to the best of their abilities, despite the absences.

Reflecting on the incident, Auchentaller said: “What I am most satisfied with is that from then on, we made new friendships across two teams. They really appreciated our willingness to help, but I have to say that we never had a doubt about it: such situations are really unforeseeable, and I would be just as happy as them if some other team would step up to help my guys and girls. But I think in biathlon, it would not be hard for that to happen and I believe that if we had not heard about the needs of the Japanese team in Oberhof, someone else would have surely done exactly the same as we did!

“I believe respect is the fundamental in sport. Obviously, everyone tries to do their utmost to come on top, but in biathlon, I believe everyone and every team, everyone in the biathlon family knows what respect is and how this comes before everything else. The fact that we can all count on each other is one of the biggest strengths of biathlon.”

During a women’s race, Austrian athlete Lisa Theresa Hauser was responsible for accidentally breaking the ski pole of German rival Vanessa Hinz. With no coach close by to replace the broken pole, Hauser gave her own pole to Hinz, enabling her to continue the race without handicap.

For more details, to report other examples of respect in Biathlon or to get involved in the Summer of Respect, contact:

Katharina Gatterer, Safeguarding and Education Officer

[email protected]

+43 662 85 50 50 16

Dr Katja Mjøsund at the IBU Physician Seminar

The BIU welcomed a presentation by Dr Katja Mjøsund on the subject of Medication and Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) at an IBU Physician Seminar on 14 June 2023, which included some useful tips on an important topic for athletes and coaches.

Dr Mjøsund is a consultant physician specialized in sports and exercise medicine. Her primary message to the participants at the seminar was that athletes need to be careful when taking any medication, while coaches and team doctors should also be aware of the risks, and ensure that athletes check any medication before using it.

Dr Mjøsund said: “Health is a prerequisite to performance, success and development in sports. Although endurance athletes are in general healthy, athletes can still fall ill and require medical treatment.

“When assessing medications in athletes it’s important to consider interactions, side effects, possible effects on performance and various regulations, primarily the list of prohibited substances and methods in sports, published yearly by WADA.”

Medications can be checked at The Global Drug Reference Online (Global DRO), which provides athletes with information about the status of certain medications based on the current World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited list.

Global GRO can be found at: https://www.globaldro.com/Home

Alternatively, athletes can consult the Medication Database of their own National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs).

Meanwhile, more details on TUEs can be found on the BIU website, which explains the process for TUE Applications.

Dr Mjösund concluded: “Health and proper medical care are fundamental rights for athletes, as they are for everyone. Sometimes an athlete’s medical condition might require treatment with a prohibited substance or method. To ensure fairness and also a level playing field in sports, while also optimizing the medical care of the athlete, a rigorous process of Therapeutic Use Exemptions has been created.

“The TUE process is designed to ensure that the athlete gets the required medical care without any additional effect on performance (other than a return to the athlete’s normal state of health).”

Dr. Katja Mjøsund

Dr. Mjøsund is head physician at the Olympic Training Centre in Helsinki, a senior advisor at the Paavo Nurmi Centre, University of Turku, a sports medicine consultant at clinic Aava, and a team physician for national orienteering and biathlon teams.

She also has a strong research background and expertise in skeletal muscle energy metabolism, Dr Mjøsund serves as an expert for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and a member of the International Testing Agency Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee.

BIU publishes annual report 2022-2023

BIU publishes annual report 2022-2023

The Biathlon Integrity Unit today published its Annual Report for the period May 2022 to April 2023, a year in which the BIU’s focus has been on prevention of wrongdoing.

In her introductory message to this, the BIU’s third annual report, Louise Reilly, chair of the BIU’s Board, comments: “Our approach is not about retribution. It is about anticipating and attempting to prevent integrity breaches from occurring in the first place. It is about being pro-active, so that everyone in the Biathlon community knows from the outset what is expected of them and how to play fair.”

Out of a total budget of €1.70 million (compared with €1.76 million last year), the report shows that 58 per cent was spent on Sample Collection & Analysis, 14 per cent on Operations, 13 per cent on Prevention (up from 11 per cent last year), 9 per cent on Legal Support, 3 per cent on the BIU Board and 3 per cent on Other.

In the field of anti-doping, the BIU collected 1,389 samples, of which 64 per cent were collected out of competition. In total, 418 athletes from 33 nations were tested (compared with 341 athletes from 31 nations last year).

However, in the report, Greg McKenna, Head of the BIU writes: “We are aware there may be a misconception that the BIU’s work is almost exclusively concerned with anti-doping testing. The truth is that there is much more to the BIU’s work than testing. As I explained in a podcast interview recorded in February 2023, the BIU seeks to support the Biathlon family in protecting the integrity of the sport, and, aligned with that, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all participants.”

The podcast can be found here.

The BIU believes that education is a key component to all prevention activities, and starting this year, a new focus was set on two important integrity topics, in addition to Anti-Doping: Match-Fixing (Competition Manipulation) and Safeguarding.

The BIU also continued its collaboration with the IBU’s Development Department, with a particular emphasis on Coaches through its contribution to IBU Academy’s Coaches Courses. The focus was on educating young athletes, through educational activities at IOC-IBU development camps, IBU and Junior Cups and Youth and Junior World Championships.

Other highlights of the year included:

· A new video explaining what the BIU is, how it works and how it can help athletes and all members of the Biathlon Family. The video can be viewed here;

· A new Safeguarding survey by the BIU, which found that nearly three-quarters of Biathlon’s National Federations that responded to the survey had a Safeguarding code of conduct in place;

· An outreach, including a quiz, on Competition Manipulation at the 2022 Summer Biathlon World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany;

· For the first time, the BIU took responsibility for overseeing the process of electing officials at an IBU Congress, after the BIU Board was asked to act as the election committee;

· The introduction of a mandatory ‘Biathlon Integrity Certificate’, which aims to ensure that everyone dealing with athletes has a basic knowledge of integrity and anti-doping matters;

· An agreement with the Switzerland-based sports tech and data firm Sportradar to use the specialist equipment provided by its Sportradar Integrity Services (SIS) division to monitor IBU competitions;

· The addition of Dr. Tanja Haug, a sports law expert with more than 20 years of experience, to the BIU’s Board;

· The introduction of a ‘Whereabouts Certificate’ that all athletes that are part of the IBU’s Registered Testing Pool must obtain by completing an online course;

· The recruitment of two new BIU Athlete Ambassadors: Chloe Levins (USA) and Lovro Planko (Slovenia);

The BIU Annual Report May 2022 to April 2023 can be found here

Note to editors

The Biathlon Integrity Unit is an operationally independent and specialised unit of the International Biathlon Union. It was established in 2019 in order to ensure all of Biathlon’s stakeholders can have confidence that ethical issues in the sport will be addressed independently and expertly.

Safeguarding webinar

The BIU held a successful safeguarding webinar on 31 May, 2023.

Entitled ‘Keep Biathlon Safe’, the webinar covered the important topic of what organisations can and should do to prevent harassment and abuse and was mainly aimed at administrative personnel from National Federations. These included safeguarding officers and others responsible for safeguarding, or those with significant levels of contact with athletes and coaches.

The centrepiece of the webinar was a talk by Allison Forsyth from ITP Sport and Recreation, who shared her own experience of sporting abuse, and talked about how sports organisations can help minimise the risks of other athletes experiencing such traumatic abuse.

Kirsty Burrows from the IOC Safe Sport Unit also made an important contribution to the seminar, presenting the IOC’s mission and role in safeguarding to further strengthen safe sport.

Kirsty Burrows said: “Safeguarding is a topic of crucial importance to the Olympic Movement. We recognise that previously there may have been a consideration that because sport is so good and attracts so many people, that sport would somehow be protected from harassment and abuse occurring within it. However, we know that this is not true. Harassment and abuse occur in all sports, in all sport disciplines, in all countries around the world.”

Allison Forsyth said: “We need to stop cultural normalization of abusive behaviour, which is behaviour that have been accepted in sport usually as game play tactics and/or coaching tactics. Many of these behaviours can lead to maltreatment, including rituals (hazing).”

This seminar is one of the several initiatives taken by the BIU to educate and support our National Federations to implement a robust safeguarding programme.

Be smart – train smart

How do biathletes train? How should they train? And how can they avoid overtraining?

In the BIU’s latest podcast interview, Andrea Zattoni, who has been working as a coach with the Italian Winter Sports Federation for 15 years, discusses training (both during the season and in the summer), how to spot the signs of overtraining, maintaining a good balance between training and recovery, and the importance of training smart, versus training hard.

Greg McKenna, Head of the BIU comments: “Providing athletes with education on training smart promotes integrity by instilling discipline, self-awareness, and resilience. Athletes who train wisely, listen to their bodies, and avoid shortcuts build physical and mental strenght, hence resist pressures to cheat or take performance-enhancing drugs”.

Click here to listen to the interview.

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