Team Botswana has been taken through their paces by the National AntiDoping (NADO) team ahead of the regional games which are set to commence on Friday in Lilongwe, Malawi. African Union Sport Council (AUSC) Region 5 kick-starts in Malawi in just two (2) days and the local anti-doping officers took time to educate the youngsters about the subject of doping.

It has been confirmed that, testing will be conducted during the games and therefore, it was imperative to train the youngsters on the process of testing and the importance of carrying out the exercise.

The agency coordinates anti-doping regulations for all sporting codes in the country, focusing on, amongst others; anti-doping education, prevention, investigations and monitoring compliance with the global anti-doping program.

AUSC Region 5 games are used as a development tournament and are played by young stars under the age of 20. NADO saw an opportunity to engage with different local teams and impart their message of ZERO tolerance to doping in sport.

Part of their strategic priority is to deter and eventually eliminate doping amongst local athletes, and they (NADO) have in recent times stepped up education measures for a wider reach of their targets and long-term objectives.

“Ideally all our teams have to be prepped before going for any regional, continental or Global competitions for them to be ready for what might happen regarding doping issues. Most of them (AUSC Region 5 athletes) have never been tested, it will be their first time should some be selected for a collection of samples.

They have never received anti-doping education, at least 90 percent of them have never come across the subject of anti-doping,” Fredrick Seno, NADO coordinator said.

NADO officials spent at least three (3) days to go through different camps of various sporting codes to share their message, covering football, volleyball and athletics just to mention but a few.

There has been concerns that, local athletes are testing positive for banned substances with local 800 m runner Nijel Amos featuring amongst the latest athletes banned by World Athletics for testing positive. Unconfirmed reports last month also suggested that there are at least two cases recorded in Softball, which further put a blow to NADO’s dream of achieving clean sport without doping cases. The local doping office has since embarked on closely working with all relevant stakeholders to share education about doping and further held workshops to train their staff/personnel to enable a wider reach out to their audience.

“It was actually a very interesting engagement,

they are willing to learn and it is very imperative that we continue to follow and monitor them even when there are no competitions. By the time they reach the elite level, I am confident that we would not experience any positive tests relating to doping,” Seno shared his experience of engaging with young athletes.

NADO national coordinator Seno, went on to implore the local sport administrators to continuously engage their office and view them as partners to enable a successful fight against doping. He said their office has noted with concern as some codes have held regional and continental championship but excluded NADO in their proceedings.