In some situations, athletes may need to take a prohibited substance or use a prohibited method listed on the Prohibited List for genuine medical reasons. Anti-doping rules therefore allow for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs), which enable athletes to receive necessary treatment while remaining compliant with the rules.
The TUE process is governed by one of the eight International Standards developed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). All signatories to the World Anti-Doping Code are required to follow these standards.
Only a small proportion of athletes (around 1–3%) require a TUE, and no evidence shows that having one provides a performance advantage. Nonetheless, the system is sometimes the subject of public debate and media scrutiny, occasionally portrayed as a potential loophole. In reality, TUEs are based on clear regulatory principles, robust medical assessment, and rigorous implementation. All TUEs submitted to the ITA are assessed independently through the ITA International Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee (iTUEC).
The number of TUEs managed by the ITA depends on several factors: the number of international-level athletes in a sport, the athlete population profile (for example, age), and the number of International Federations that delegate their TUE program to the ITA.
To support transparency and improve understanding of how Therapeutic Use Exemptions are managed in international sport, the ITA publishes anonymised statistics on TUE applications it administers on behalf of its partner International Federations.
The below interactive dashboard provides an overview of TUE application volumes, their status, and their distribution across sports and substance classes over time. It allows athletes, stakeholders, and the public to better understand how the TUE process operates in practice, while ensuring that athletes’ medical confidentiality is fully protected.
The dashboard presents aggregated data on TUE applications managed by the ITA for athletes defined as “international-level” by their respective International Federation.
Users can explore:
Use the filters to explore the data by year, sport, or substance class, and navigate between overview and more detailed views.
The dashboard displays anonymised and aggregated data, including application numbers, trends, and distributions by sport and substance class. To note that the ITA partnership for some of the International Federations started after 2019, which explains “void” years for some sports.
It does not display athlete identities, medical information, or any data that could lead to the identification of an individual athlete. To protect athletes’ medical confidentiality, information is not broken down by country, as the relatively small number of applications could make individuals identifiable.
Use this link to export the dataset behind the TUE Dashboard.
