Reassuring. After a long downturn in 2020, following the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, the fight against doping returned to cruising speed last year. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) unveiled Thursday, January 27, the figures for controls carried out in 2021 on a global scale. Last year, a total of 274.254 samples were collected for doping control purposes by 256 National Anti-Doping Organizations (ADOs). In 2020, confinements and the absence of competitions caused these figures to plunge to a historically low level, with only 168.256 samples taken by 207 ADOs. In 2019, the last year before the health crisis, the number of samples reached 305.881 samples. WADA specifies in a press release: the number of in-competition tests was lower in 2021 than the figures recorded before the pandemic, partly due to the reduced number of international meetings, but the number of out-of-competition samples collected in over the last 12 months is higher than in 2019. Comment from WADA President, Pole Witold Bańka: “ The most recent data shows that the anti-doping community has managed to maintain high levels of testing, despite severe restrictions in place in many parts of the world due to Omicron and other virus variants. These figures demonstrate resilience, but also a real capacity to continue to collaborate and innovate to protect athletes during the period leading to the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing."
