Commonwealth advisers stamp out drug taking in sport

The advisers have been based in Regional Anti-Doping Organizations (RADOs), which focus on developing and implementing an ‘Education Strategy’ for their respective regions as well as establishing anti-doping rules and regulations. RADOs also provide assistance to individual countries, in order to ensure these anti-doping policies are implemented.

Over the last three years, the four regional experts have introduced a number of activities and projects to raise awareness about the dangers of drug taking:

In the Caribbean

• Information on drugs is passed on to athletes at major sporting events including CARIFTA – the annual regional Under-19 track and field games - and the Cricket World Cup. 
• ‘True or false’ computer quiz games have been created to disseminate information on drug taking to athletes.

In the Pacific

• A guidebook has been developed to provide athletes with a one-stop-shop that outlines everything they need to know about anti-doping.
• ‘Athlete Ambassadors’ are used to increase awareness throughout the region. They were present, for instance, at the XIII South Pacific Games in Samoa in 2007.
• An outreach programme called ‘Voice of the Athletes’, which contains a series of anti-doping messages, has been active at a number of events throughout the Pacific, including the Oceania 7s World Cup Qualifying Tournament in Samoa in 2008 and the Oceania Youth Basketball Tournament in Guam the same year.

In East Africa

• A comic strip is being used to teach young people about the misuse of drugs in sport. It aims to stimulate discussion between teachers, students, athletes and officials on the effects of doping on health, sports performance, other competitors and moral values.
• Drama, poetry and music in schools are all used to dispel ignorance of many young people. One such drama focuses on a school athletics relay team where one of the athletes takes legal drugs to help an ailment without knowing it is prohibited. The play then explores the effect of this drug-taking on the individual as well as his teammates. After the drama has been acted out by the students, the floor is opened up to questions, so any lack of awareness is quashed.
• Peer education is also seen as a positive move, as they tend to “talk at their level and communicate better than older generations”, explains Valerie Onyango, the Commonwealth’s East Africa regional adviser.

In Southern Africa

• Joel Libombo, the Commonwealth’s adviser on anti-doping in Southern Africa, is working with role models to explain the negative impact of drugs to athletes. These role models are present at the youth games and other sporting events to show young people why they should not use drugs, using personal and emotive examples of their experiences or those of other athletes.

Warning from a role model:

Before running out on to a dry and dusty football pitch in Nampula, Mozambique’s third largest city, Aquimo Rachide and his teammates were regularly given a pill from their elderly masseur.

All they were ever told about this pill, which swiftly became a natural part of their preparation for matches, was that it would “invigorate them while they were playing”.

Mr Rachide, now 52, recalls that during games when he took this drug, called ‘lipo’, he had much more energy than usual. Yet, during the days which followed these matches, extreme tiredness crept in as his body felt increasingly weak.

“As soon as I had taken the pill I felt like Superman, but a few hours after the game finished I felt drastically different to the point where I could hardly move.

“Looking back it seems obvious, but at the time I didn’t link the drugs to how I was feeling.”

During the four years which Mr Rachide took the drug, between the ages of 23 to 28, his body grew more and more frail as his reliance on these pills failed to replace a lack of food in his diet.

Twenty years later, Mr Rachide is a physical education teacher in Maputo, and works with Mr Libombo, advising young people on the dangers of drugs.

Mr Rachide explains his own story as a warning to young people, to stop them following the same path he took.

This partnership project comes to across by the end of November 2009 when it is handed over to the Regional Anti Doping Organisations.