Montreal: WADA has announced the date of its Annual Symposium; the event will be held on March 13, 2017 at the SwissTech Convention Center in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Following an unprecedented year for the Anti-Doping community, with sanctions and revelations buzzing the news world, WADA’s 2017 Symposium will once again bring together Anti-Doping Organizations (ADOs) including International Federations (IFs), National and Regional Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs and RADOs), Major Event Organizers (MEOs), WADA-accredited laboratories, as well as athletes and – for the first time – government representatives involved in anti-doping matters.
Such has been the atmosphere in past few months that the revelations of doping violations and sanctions to the Athletes involved, have been the constant news pieces. Such has been the scenario that even late yesterday, IOC Disciplinary Commission had the task of working out the kind of sanctions it wanted to put on Athletes and in this latest case of Eight Olympic Athletes, Athletes from China, Belarus, Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan were onto the receiving end for their misconduct. And the past year also WADA Data Leak twice which had one Russian Hacker group getting hold of some information related to the Clean Athletes competing in the Olympics. The focus of this year’s Symposium will be the theme of “Tackling our Challenges and Strengthening the Future of Clean Sport”.
As per the schedule of WADA Symposium shared with SportsCrunch, highlights on Day 1 include a presentation and Q&A session with Professor Richard McLaren, who will be interacting with the various stakeholders of Anti-doping movement following the publication of his Independent Report, as well as a Round-table discussion on whistleblowing with WADA’s Director of Intelligence and Investigations, Gunter Younger.
Post that, WADA’s President, Sir Craig Reedie, will be presenting as will WADA’s Director General, Olivier Niggli. The WADA Symposium is expected to bring some more actions related to the way forward on the Anti-doping system.