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IOC chief Bach urges personal approach system to fight doping abuse in sports

We think the system should have an equal distance from both shareholders - from the sports organizations as well as from the government, Bach said

IOC president Thomas Bach EPA/LAURENT GILLIERON

IOC president Thomas Bach

© EPA/LAURENT GILLIERON

LAUSANNE, December 8. /TASS/. A special system with a personal approach to sports disciplines and athletes defining the exact number of doping samples to be collected is necessary for the fight against the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said on Thursday.

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"We think the system should have an equal distance from both shareholders - from the sports organizations as well as from the government," Bach told a news conference after the IOC Executive Board’s session in Lausanne on December 6-8.

"This should result in an international harmonized top-down anti-doping program under the leadership of WADA," he said. "In this way strengthening WADA to define… the individual programs not only per federation, not only per sport, but the discipline.

"So at the very end, every athlete in every discipline knows how many tests his competitor has to undergo before he or she can participate in the Olympic Games," the IOC president added.

Several months ago the IOC urged reformations in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). An issue of reformations within WADA emerged after the report of agency’s Independent Commission on the allegedly widespread doping abuse in the world’s largest country, Russia, which led to the partial ban of the country’s national Olympians from the 2016 Summer Games and the suspension of the entire Paralympic team from the 2016 Paralympics in Brazil.

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