MORE than one athlete needs to test positive for a banned substance before a team can be stripped of their medal or disqualified from participation in the Rio Olympics.
Oceania Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (ORADO) executive director Natanya Potoi-Uliya said one athlete alone could not hold the team accountable should he or she test positive for a banned substance.
With much talk surrounding Jaryd Hayne’s inclusion in the Vodafone Fiji 7s squad for the London 7s and his eligibility along with a fear surrounding the use of banned substances in sports, Potoi-Uliya, who is based in Suva, said:
“Most often you are looking at two or more committing an anti-doping rule violation before a whole team is disqualified as a result of a positive test.
“For Jarryd, if World Rugby and WADA, the National Olympic Committee and the national federation are happy with his qualification, then that means that he has qualified and met the criteria. The rest are just personal views of respective people about his participation in the game. According to the rules, he has met the criteria to actually be a part of the Fiji team,” she said.
Potoi-Uliya said drug testing had been a regular occurrence in sports and athletes needed to be careful.
“There is a lot of testing conducted before a competition, especially with World Rugby for example which has been doing a lot of tests for two or three years before the Olympics. It’s not like they decided to do a drug test just this year, they do it quite regularly. With the Olympic Games, the in-competition period starts when the Olympic Village actually opens,” she said.
She said that in-competition testing could be conducted anywhere, regardless of whether an athlete was in or out of the Games Village because the in-competition testing time-frame began when the Games Village officially opened.
“Those are some of the things athletes need to be prepared for. They need to be aware of whatever medication they take or whatever recreational stuff they are thinking of taking.”