Doping in disability sport: National deaf sports exist in a world outside doping control

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By Con-struct (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This article is part of a ParaSport News series of articles looking at doping in the Paralympic, Deaflympic and disability sports movement.

Yearly total doping violations in deaf sports by nationality.

While a ParaSport News analysis found the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD) was not transparent in its dealings with doping issues, the same analysis also found that doping was not an area of concern among national deaf sport organizations. Of the 28 identified deaf sport doping sanctions, 23 sanctions were from national anti-doping agencies. These came exclusively from two countries: Germany and Russia.

For much of the rest of the deaf sports world, doping is not an area of focus. Countries like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, the United Kingdom and Finland. There are a few exceptions to the overall lack of anti-doping information, but they appear to be just that: exceptions.

Austria’s Östereichischer Gehörlosen Sportverband has some one in charge of doping, sports director Christoph Blieweis. They comply with Austrian anti-doping regulations in the country, and require their member associations to comply with anti-doping regulations. This appears to be related to Austria’s 2007 anti-doping law, Bestimmungen des AntiDoping-Bundesgesetzes, which puts anti-doping requirements on all sporting organizations in the country.

Deaf Sports Ireland is another apparent exception. They have adopted the Irish Anti-Doping Rules and doping control is managed by Irish Sports Council on behalf of their organization. Germany is similar, with their anti-doping controls being handled by Nationale Anti Doping Agentur Deutschland. Deutscher Gehörlosen-Sportverband also has a sports medicine committee, which among other things deals with doping related policies.

Denmark’s Dansk Døve-Idrætsforbund does not appear to have an anti-doping policy. Under their current projects, they have creating a manual for dealing with issues such as doping, pedophilia, alcohol, bullying and drug use.

Despite having their national deaf sport organizations having public doping policies, neither Austria nor Germany or Ireland’s national deaf sport organizations publish lists of sanctioned sportspeople or numbers related to doping control efforts inside their organizations.

The data collected by ParaSport News for this report is available here for the benefit of other journalists and the sports community.

Doping in disability sport: National deaf sports exist in a world outside doping control