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10 August 2021
ITA’s virtual education programs consist of two webinar streams. The monthly public series covers key anti-doping topics and is freely available to anyone who is interested in tuning in. Voices of experts and athletes ensure that the most recent insights and personal experiences are passed on to the participants. The second offering is the ITA IF series, an online webinar course for International Federations (IFs) that covers all key anti-doping topics as well as sport-specific nuances.
Both programs represent a major step forward on the ITA’s mission of promoting clean sport and providing a wealth of anti-doping knowledge across the sports world. “Accessibility is one of the major challenges in anti-doping education,” says the ITA Education Manager Olya Abasolo OLY. “By making webinars freely available online and delivering them in different languages, we are reaching members of the sport community who would not otherwise have the opportunity to access this important information live”.
The ITA collaborated with seven International Federations (World Baseball and Softball Confederation, the International Boxing Association, the International Automobile Federation, World Rowing, the World Squash Federation, the International Teqball Federation and the International Weightlifting Federation) to provide their sport communities with this comprehensive anti-doping webinar course.
Covering all the compulsory education topics set out in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code and the International Standard for Education (ISE), the course consists of five webinars delivered in English with simultaneous translation to Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Russian and Spanish.
With interactive polls, Q&As and chat options enabled for all participants, the webinars were designed to be interactive and engaging. The first ITA IF series reached 3,360 participants from 138 countries and was very well received:
“As an educator with about 35 years of experience, I would give this course an A+. All of the presenters seemed experts in the subject matter and were quite personable. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience… and I learned a lot.”
“Excellent course. Very informative. I’m glad I did it. I wasn’t sure about an online course but it was as good as any course I have attended in person.”
“The overall course has brought a wealth of knowledge and information about the principles and values associated with clean sport. The short videos were helpful along with the testimonies of the whistleblowers. The presenters were excellent.”
Building on the success of the first set of webinars, the second edition of this online course is due to start in September of 2021.
The webinar in August 2021 about nutrition and dietary supplements comes as a reaction to the positive feedback and to answer the follow-up questions the ITA education team received after the first webinar about this topic, broadcasted in April.
During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the ITA shifted its learning activities from event-based education to virtual sessions in order to be able to provide continuous and relevant anti-doping education. Eager to share anti-doping knowledge and expertise with the larger public, the ITA public webinars were launched as a five-webinar pilot in 2020. Starting in 2021, diverse topics from the anti-doping world are now discussed monthly with leading experts, and complemented by the experiences of athlete guests.
The public webinars deal with a wide-ranging set of topics such as “Doping Control at the Olympic and Paralympic Games“, accessible testing, safer use of supplements, the legal side of anti-doping and whistleblowing. The main goal of the series is to cover topics that may have a lack of publicly available and accessible information for Athletes and Athlete Support Personnel.
These sessions are also interactives and delivered in English with simultaneous translation to Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish.
Due to their success, bespoke sport-specific webinars also continue to be in demand and are proving to be an invaluable resource for International Federations to connect with their sport community. Outside the framework of the ITA IF series, additional sessions have been delivered so far to the International Federations of Baseball and Softball, Biathlon, Fencing, Hockey, Lacrosse, Table Tennis, Weightlifting and Wushu/Kungfu.
The ITA public webinars, combined with the ITA IF series, prove to be powerful educational tools. With their awareness-raising and informative nature, the programs guide athletes towards informed decision-making and play a crucial role in ensuring a clean and fair field of play.
If you have not watched the webinars yet or wish to revisit one of the recordings, here are the links to each of the 2021 sessions:
July – ITA webinar – “Doping Control at the Paralympic Games and accessible testing”
June – ITA webinar – “The Tokyo 2020 Anti-Doping Program”
May – ITA Webinar – “The Legal Side of Anti-Doping”
April – ITA Webinar – “Nutrition and Dietary Supplements”
March – ITA Webinar – “Revealing Doping in Sport”
February – ITA webinar “ITA webinar: Doping Control – be prepared for any scenario”
January – ITA webinar “Set up for a successful year – Tips on navigating the anti-doping system”
1 January 2021
7 July 2020
3 April 2024
27 April 2021
23 March 2021
12 May 2021
14 June 2021
13 May 2020
27 May 2020
