While COVID-19 has shut down sport in Australia and around the world, ASADA’s CEO David Sharpe says our role in protecting sport is “more critical than ever”.

“There’s a lot of pressure on athletes and right now, more than ever, ASADA’s role is to look at the environment and ensure that we are still able to effectively protect the environment for the future of sport,” Sharpe says.

It’s important to understand that testing is only one component of what ASADA does to protect the integrity of sport, Sharpe says.

“It [our role] is multi-faceted,” he says. “At the moment, while testing has reduced, we still have the capacity to identify any significant threats or areas where we may need to conduct testing.

“We are constantly assessing and constantly replanning our testing missions and capability to be ready to go should there be a requirement.”

Our Chief Science Officer Dr Naomi Speers has helped lead ASADA’s COVID-19 response with the safety of athletes and our staff the “priority”, she says.

“Obviously there has been significant impact on our field operations and we’re really conscious of ensuring that athletes are kept safe with any testing we do and that our staff are kept safe and we’ve put in place process and procedures that will ensure that,” Dr Speers said.

We also answer a question from the public: “Why does ASADA keep samples for 10 years?”