Anti-Doping in Sport: WADA, NADA, CAS and the Code

The correct answer is B, Montreal, Canada. WADA began work in 1999 from Lausanne and then moved its headquarters to Montreal, where the agency has remained; Lausanne continues as its European office. Option A is wrong, and it is the trap in this question, because Lausanne is the seat of the International Olympic Committee and of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, so candidates place every sports body there. Option C is wrong because Paris is the headquarters of UNESCO, which adopted the International Convention against Doping in Sport in 2005, and of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, not of WADA. Option D is wrong because New York holds the United Nations headquarters and a branch office of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but no office of WADA of that standing. Remembering the pair Montreal for WADA and Lausanne for the Olympic bodies settles a whole family of questions.

The correct answer is C, 1999. WADA was created on 10 November 1999, a year after the Festina affair of the 1998 Tour de France, in which a team car carrying banned drugs exposed how organised doping had become and pushed the Olympic movement and governments to build a joint agency. Option A is wrong because 1984 is the year the Court of Arbitration for Sport was established on the initiative of the International Olympic Committee. Option B is wrong because 1994 is the year of the Paris Agreement, by which the International Council of Arbitration for Sport was created to run that court independently. Option D is wrong because 2004 is the year the World Anti-Doping Code came into force, on 1 January, five years after the agency itself. Holding the sequence 1984 for the court, 1994 for its council, 1999 for WADA and 2004 for the Code answers four questions at once.

The correct answer is B, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. NADA was set up on 24 November 2005 as a registered society under that ministry, and it plans and carries out sample collection, manages results and runs education programmes so that sport in India is practised without doping. The National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 later gave the agency a footing in law and created a National Board for Anti-Doping in Sports to oversee it. Option A is wrong because the health ministry deals with drug regulation and public health, not with sport testing, although doping involves medicines. Option C is wrong because the home ministry has no role of this kind; narcotics control is a separate subject from sports doping. Option D is wrong because the education ministry handles school and higher education, while sport, including the Sports Authority of India and Khelo India, sits with the youth affairs and sports ministry.

The correct answer is A, Lausanne, in Switzerland. CAS was established in 1984 at the initiative of the International Olympic Committee, whose own headquarters is in the same city, and it also keeps branch offices at Sydney and New York besides sitting in ad hoc divisions at the Olympic Games. Option B is wrong because Geneva hosts the United Nations European headquarters, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, but not this court. Option C is wrong because The Hague is the seat of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which are courts between states, not between athletes and federations. Option D is wrong because Monaco is the headquarters of World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, which is a federation and not a tribunal. Appeals from a CAS award lie only to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.

The correct answer is C, UNESCO. Because WADA is a private foundation, governments needed an instrument of international law through which they could commit themselves to the Code, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization provided it by adopting the International Convention against Doping in Sport in 2005. It is the treaty that most countries, India among them, have ratified. Option A is wrong because the World Health Organization deals with health standards and medicines but is not the parent of this convention. Option B is wrong because the International Olympic Committee is a private body and cannot make a treaty; it enforces the Code through the conditions of entry to the Games instead. Option D is wrong because the Commonwealth Games Federation only organises its own Games and, like other federations, is a signatory to the Code rather than the author of a convention.

The correct answer is C, stimulants and narcotics. The Prohibited List divides substances into those banned at all times, those banned only in competition and those banned only in particular sports. Stimulants, narcotics, cannabinoids and glucocorticoids fall in the in-competition group, because their effect is felt on the day of the event rather than through training. Option A is wrong because anabolic agents, which build muscle during training, are banned at all times, in and out of competition. Option B is wrong because peptide hormones and growth factors, among them erythropoietin and growth hormone, are likewise banned at all times. Option D is wrong because diuretics and masking agents are banned at all times, since their purpose is to flush or hide the traces of other drugs. Beta-blockers are the class banned only in particular sports, such as archery and shooting, where a slow heartbeat steadies the aim.

The correct answer is B. An athlete who genuinely needs a medicine that appears on the Prohibited List, such as an inhaler for asthma or insulin for diabetes, applies in advance to a panel of doctors, which may grant a Therapeutic Use Exemption limited to that substance, dose and period. Without it the same medicine would be an anti-doping rule violation, because the principle of strict liability makes an athlete answerable for whatever is found in the body. Option A is wrong because a reduction of a sanction turns on matters such as the substance being a specified one, prompt admission or substantial assistance, not on a TUE. Option C is wrong because missing tests is governed by the whereabouts rules, and three failures in a year are themselves a violation. Option D is wrong because the testing of the B sample is a procedural right and has nothing to do with an exemption.

The correct answer is B, New Delhi. The National Dope Testing Laboratory, which analyses the samples that NADA collects, functions at New Delhi under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, and its standing as a testing laboratory rests on accreditation by WADA. The National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 gives it a place in law as the principal dope testing laboratory of the country. Option A is wrong because Patiala is the home of the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, the main coaching institute, which trains coaches rather than testing samples. Option C is wrong because Bengaluru has the Sports Authority of India centre at Kanteerava Stadium and many sports science facilities but not this laboratory. Option D is wrong because Kolkata, for all its sporting history, has no national dope testing laboratory. Keeping the pair Patiala for coaching and New Delhi for testing apart is the useful habit here.

The correct answer is A, Play True. The phrase has been WADA's slogan since its early years and appears on its campaigns, its outreach programmes at major Games and its education material for athletes. Option B is wrong because faster, higher, stronger is the Olympic motto, in Latin Citius, Altius, Fortius, to which the word together was added in 2021; it belongs to the International Olympic Committee and not to WADA. Option C is wrong because sport for all is a general movement for mass participation promoted by many governments and federations, not an anti-doping slogan. Option D is wrong because, although it sounds plausible and clean sport is an expression WADA uses, the slogan asked for in papers is Play True. Questions of this kind usually sit beside the Olympic motto, so the two should be learnt as a pair and kept distinct.

The correct answer is B, Ben Johnson of Canada, who won the final in a world record time and lost the medal within days when his sample showed stanozolol. The case is treated as the moment doping became a public issue and is the usual example in questions on the subject. Option A is wrong because Carl Lewis of the United States finished second and was awarded the gold medal after the disqualification, so he is the beneficiary rather than the offender in this story. Option C is wrong because Linford Christie of Great Britain was moved up to the silver medal in the same race; his later career had its own controversy, but not at Seoul in 1988. Option D is wrong because Maurice Greene belongs to a later generation of sprinters and competed from the middle of the nineteen nineties, well after these Games.

The correct answer is A. Erythropoietin is a hormone that signals the bone marrow to make red blood cells; when it is injected, the blood carries more oxygen to the muscles and endurance rises, which is why it has been the drug of choice in cycling and distance events and why it is banned at all times as a peptide hormone. Option B is wrong because masking is the work of diuretics and other masking agents, which dilute or block the detection of a drug; EPO is taken for its own effect. Option C is wrong because slowing the heartbeat and steadying the hand describes beta-blockers, which is exactly why they are prohibited in sports such as archery and shooting. Option D is wrong because rapid loss of weight before a weigh-in is sought through diuretics, again a different class. The related method of storing and re-injecting one's own blood is called blood doping.