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Sport integrity: Why is it worth protecting?

May 13, 2024
by Megan Cumming
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A gavel on a sport field.

Sports fans are all intimately familiar with the rules of their favourite sports: what’s allowed, and what will get you penalized. Many are less familiar with the behind-the-scenes rules that protect athletes and the integrity of sport itself.

Why protect the integrity of sport? When the outcome of an event is predetermined by competition manipulation or impacted by doping, the unpredictability and excitement are lost. Fans and spectators start to believe that the outcome is rigged or unfair. With the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games just around the corner, this is a look at Canadian and international initiatives to detect and deter doping and competition manipulation.

The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) is a national, not-for-profit organization that works collaboratively to promote sport integrity through programs that aim to make sport fair, safe, accessible, and inclusive. Two of the CCES’s strategic priorities that support this goal are anti-doping and addressing competition manipulation. The CCES administers the Canadian Anti-Doping Program (CADP), the set of rules compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code (Code), contributing to global efforts to protect every athlete’s right to clean sport. And though the CCES is relatively new in the fight against competition manipulation, it’s made huge inroads for Canadian sport.

Competition manipulation: An emerging threat to the integrity of sport

Competition manipulation – or match fixing – is a deliberate effort to influence elements of a sporting contest or its outcome, usually for financial gain. It’s a global threat that is often associated with gambling and linked to organized crime. The CCES and their partners are working to protect the integrity of Canadian sport against this emerging threat.

READ MORE: The rising threat of competition manipulation

In August 2021, Bill C-218 was passed into law, paving the way for Canadian provinces and territories to permit betting operators to offer single-event sport betting. Canadians in provinces that have licensed betting operators have welcomed the change with open arms – and wallets.

Ontario’s sports betting industry, for example, projected total wagers in 2023 to exceed $60 billion. This is good news for the bottom line, but athletes and sport integrity may be collateral damage because the amount of betting on a sport is one of the most important indicators of its risk profile for competition manipulation. Just this spring, Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter was found guilty of manipulating games for betting purposes and subsequently banned for life from the NBA, and last year the Ottawa Senators’ Shane Pinto was suspended for violating the NHL’s gambling policy.

The first step in protecting athletes from getting mixed up in competition manipulation is to ensure they can recognize an attempt to draw them into a competition manipulation scheme or to gather information that could be used for betting. To this end, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and the CCES have partnered to offer online education that explains competition manipulation, the risks involved, and importantly, how participants can protect themselves. The 15-minute course, “Understanding Competition Manipulation,” includes the latest updates from the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition. The course was a requirement for athletes and support personnel participating in the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games in January for all members of Team Canada heading to the 2024 Olympics, and is available to all Paralympians. To date, the course has been completed more than 35,560 times.  

​To support the Olympic Movement Code, the IOC also has educational tools to raise athletes’ awareness of the risk of competition manipulation and related corruption. They promote these four simple rules from the IOC Code of Conduct:

  • NEVER bet on your own sport or the Olympic Games.
  • NEVER manipulate a competition and always do your best.
  • NEVER share inside information. Non-public information about your sport stays private.
  • ALWAYS report an approach to manipulate or anything suspicious.

The IOC also has Believe in Sport Ambassadors who are active or retired athletes, coaches or referees, who are committed to raising awareness about competition manipulation with fellow athletes and their entourage. Among them is Canadian and two-time Olympian artistic swimmer Jacqueline Simoneau, who spoke at the 2023 Symposium on Competition Manipulation and Gambling in Sport.

In addition to education initiatives, the CCES and the COC have developed a harmonized national policy on competition manipulation and sport betting for adoption by national sport organizations and multi-sport organizations, with support from a national working group. The CCES will independently administer the policy and support it with education, reporting, monitoring, investigations, and disciplinary proceedings.

The COC and the CCES recently wrapped up an 18-month pilot program with 6 national sport organizations to determine the feasibility of such a policy. Feedback from the pilot project informed the new national program and demonstrated how best to protect the entire Canadian sport community from risks and harms associated with competition manipulation. The project participants were Badminton Canada, Canada Basketball, Canada Soccer, Curling Canada, Racquetball Canada, and Squash Canada.

The current work to deliver education and a national policy is aligned with the 5 key recommendations from this latest white paper titled Competition Manipulation and Gambling: Threats to Canadian Sport and the Gaming Industry. It was prepared following the 2023 Symposium on Competition Manipulation and Gambling in Sport, co-hosted by CCES and McLaren Global Sport Solutions, and summarizes the current competition manipulation landscape in Canada and explores solutions for protecting sport from the growing risk. One of the long-standing recommendations for Canada to fully meet international best practices: the Government of Canada must ratify the Macolin Convention to prevent, detect, and punish match fixing. 

Anti-doping

On a global level, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the leader in anti-doping. Its primary role is to develop, harmonize and coordinate anti-doping rules and policies across all sports and countries. This is achieved by implementing the Code within sport organizations and among public authorities around the world. The Code works in conjunction with 8 International Standards, which are in place to foster consistency in specific technical and operational parts of anti-doping programs, such as education, science, and managing violations. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) are both signatories to the Code, which reflects the importance they place on the fight against doping in sport.

While the Code sets the global standards for anti-doping, individual games and events can apply specific rules and requirements for things like education, whereabouts, and medical exemptions. For Paris, the IOC has established the rules for doping control and other anti-doping activities in relation to the Olympic Games, and the IPC has done the same for the Paralympics. These specific rules apply to athletes, support personnel, and other participants for a defined time period before and during the Games.

For the Paris Olympics, the IOC has contracted a service provider to manage the anti-doping program. The International Testing Agency (ITA), in collaboration with the French anti-doping agency (AFLD), will recruit and train the sample collection personnel, manage the doping control stations, and carry out all aspects of sample collection. The IPC will manage the Paralympic Games in collaboration with AFLD.

The actual sample collection processes at both Games will follow the steps laid out in the International Standard for Testing and Investigations. Canadian athletes will be familiar with their rights and responsibilities throughout the process, as well as the standard sample collection procedures.

Athletes can be tested anywhere, at any time and can be selected based on their finishing position, risk profile, or at random. Doping control stations throughout the athletes’ village and sport venues provide centralized locations for sample collection. In Paris, the global team of doping control staff will be composed of experienced doping control officers (DCOs) who are nominated by their national anti-doping agencies.

Clean sport requires international cooperation

As a means to enhance athlete and public confidence, WADA operates the Independent Observer (IO) program during major multi-sport events to assess the anti-doping program in an objective, unbiased manner. Since the program launch at the 2000 Sydney Games, WADA IO teams have worked with doping control teams and organizers to conduct audit-style assessments for more than 50 events. These IO teams consist of people who have the skills and experience required to observe and comment on anti-doping activities, such as senior staff from anti-doping and sport integrity organizations, as well as experienced athletes. Following an event, the IO team provides a report that covers all aspects of the anti-doping program and suggests improvements on everything from test distribution to sample collection to sample storage.

Another initiative that convenes an international group of experts is the pre-Games task force. Comprised of representatives from national anti-doping organizations, international federations, and WADA, the task force uses scientific and sport science expertise to develop recommendations and provide a robust testing plan for the lead-up to the Games. The recommendations are implemented by anti-doping organizations across all sports and Olympic hopefuls.

The CCES also develops a pre-Games testing plan, which is built by layering its own risk assessment of athletes who might be nominated to Team Canada with the task force’s recommendations. For previous Olympic Games, the CCES has repeatedly met its goal of testing 100% of the Olympic team athletes and has applied a risk-based assessment to ensure that athletes attending the Paralympics are tested during the pre-Games period.

Pre-Games education

As the beating heart of sport, athletes are at the centre of all sport integrity initiatives, and resources and policies must suit the reality of their unique profession. The CCES provides the majority of its education to athletes by e-learning to meet them where they are – everywhere! 

All athletes and designated support personnel are required to complete 2 online learning courses before the Games, including True Sport Clean and Understanding Competition Manipulation. True Sport Clean courses promote values in sport and address the components of the CADP, such as substances and methods on the Prohibited List, the sample collection process, athlete rights and responsibilities, supplements, and more.

All CCES education materials deliver athlete-centered, values-based clean sport education to athletes and stakeholders. In the Canadian context, values-based education is defined as an educational approach that places the development of an individual’s personal values and principles at the heart of their sport experience. It prioritizes the development of their ethical literacy and builds their capacity to make decisions based on moral reasoning. This approach to education is in line with WADA’s 2021 International Standard for Education, which uses “clean sport”broadly as a term for sport that is rooted in values and principles.

Beyond the requisite e-learning courses that ensure athletes can confidently navigate anti-doping, the CCES will provide Games-specific information to the sport community through their sport organizations and avenues such as social media. This includes details about when they’ll be subject to the Paris 2024 anti-doping rules, how and when to apply for a Therapeutic Use Exemption, and whereabouts.      

Conclusion

Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting and clean sport advocate Christine Girard’s story reminds us why we protect the integrity of sport. Her Olympic medals were upgraded twice after it was determined that her competitors were doping.

“…I also wondered what it would have felt like to have received the gold medal at the Olympic Games. How would it have felt to hear the Canadian national anthem and to be the first gold medal in weightlifting for my country? How much more attention and support would I have received with 1 of Canada’s 2 gold medals from the Games, instead of 1 of many bronzes? I joked that perhaps I could have been on a cereal box,” wrote Christine in an Athlete Perspective SIRC blog.

Her moments on the podium were stolen from her – an experience that can never be replicated. When the outcome of a sporting event is fixed or the playing field is tipped in favour of an athlete because of banned substance use, the integrity of sport is lost.

The CCES believes that sport has great value and good sport should not be left to chance.  We’re committed to collaborating with partners and allies to establish best practices and frameworks to make sure athletes and other participants will flourish in sport environments that value sport that is clean and honest.

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About the Author(s)

Megan Cumming is the Corporate Communications Manager with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES). She has held many roles with the CCES and has a passion for amateur sport, from grassroots to high-performance.

The information presented in SIRC blogs and SIRCuit articles is accurate and reliable as of the date of publication. Developments that occur after the date of publication may impact the current accuracy of the information presented in a previously published blog or article.

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