UK Anti-Doping

Um, so you've covered off, um, a lot of, uh, I guess my, my biography, so to speak, um, in the intro.

Um, but I started my career, um, working at UK Anti-Doping.

So, um, that was my, my first job at university, um, but have spent the rest of my career working in high performance sport.

Um, after that, I moved to UK Sport, um, where, as you mentioned, I was one of the co-authors of the UK Sport pregnancy guidance.

Are we any closer, and this is kinda linked, are we any closer to resolving the issues that seem to ... drag on and on and on in regards to what happened a few years ago with Conor Benn and the adverse tests.

And initially, one of the problems, of course, was that the tests were carried out by VADA, but the board can only act on tests that are carried out by UKAD.

Is that something that has now been resolved or is in the process of being resolved?

No, we've had a couple of cases, uh, where, um, if a box- boxers are licensed by us, it's our jurisdiction as well.

Conor Benn was slightly different, to be honest with you.

Um, but you mustn't forget that UKAD carry out all our tests, and they deal with all the disciplinary matters.

Those disciplinary mat- We've had a number of cases similar now where UKAD under, are, are working on behalf of the British Boxing Board of Control can deal with that, and we've had a few, few of them recently.

Um, can't go into them obviously.

So I don't think we can use referral base to identify the prevalence of the problem.

If you look at the UK Anti-Doping agency stats, then between three hundred and six hundred thousand men aged between fifteen and sixty-five years old take anabolic steroids.

And we know that these agents have a detrimental effect on the cardiovascular system and the peripheral vascular system.

And so maybe one of the things that's always hard for us, particularly people like me who don't, do, do not have an expertise in the subject, is being able to distinguish the difference between athlete's heart, you know, the adaptations that come from, uh, lots of exercise versus changes that might come from performance-enhancing drugs.

Like, to just do, like start doing random...

Imagine pop- imagine the, like, UK Anti-Doping or WADA just showing up at parkrun.

Yeah.

[laughs]