Use double quotes to find documents that include the exact phrase: "aerodynamic AND testing"

Paralympian Brianna Hennessy sees her combination of sports (wheelchair rugby and Para canoe and kayak) as inherently compatible. One sport relies on pushing, the other on pulling, making her an all-round better athlete. Experiences like Hennessy’s are part of the reason that the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Own the Podium are collaborating to develop an “Athlete Transfer System” that will provide support to athletes who wish to switch sports or compete in multiple sports.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of available research determined that a 30-60 minute afternoon nap has a beneficial impact on physical performance. An afternoon nap also promotes improved cognitive performance and reduces perceived fatigue after sport activity.

The use of nicotine by athletes has not been thoroughly examined. A recent study found that 1 in 5 athletes, from a range of 90 different sports, tested positive for nicotine in-competition. Positivity rates were lower in endurance sports than power-based ones, and lower in individual sports than team sports. These findings suggest that WADA could further investigate nicotine use within elite athletes.

You’d be hard pressed to visit a large Canadian city these days and not see a billboard for sports gambling. Maybe you’ve noticed a similar trend while watching TV, of athletes and celebrities telling us not only which sports books to use, but how easy it is to bet on games across different sports and leagues. If it seems like these ads popped up overnight, they kind of did!

It’s been less than 2 years since Bill C-218, an Act to amend the Criminal Code (regarding sports betting) became law, paving the way for provincial and territorial governments to regulate single-event sport betting, and providing consumer protections and increased economic opportunities.

Betting operators were up and running quickly, and the numbers tell us that Canadians have enthusiastically taken to this new way of gambling on sport. iGamingOntario reported that total wagers in Q4 of 2022 were $13.9 billion, which brought the total wagers for the year to $35.5 billion and $1.4 billion total gaming revenue (dollar amounts represent a combination of sports betting and casino play). During the same timeframe, just over 1 million player accounts were active, and 1.65 million accounts were active over the course of the year. For reference, Ontario’s population is just shy of 15 million.

For betting operators and gaming websites, this is all good news, over a million Ontarians are placing bets and revenue is high. But with more betting comes the increased likelihood of competition manipulation and other threats to sport integrity. Several sport integrity services are in the business of monitoring suspicious activity around online betting, watching for “suspicious matches.” Why is this important? Because a “suspicious match” indicates that a betting irregularity was detected and there’s potential that the match, or an element of it, was manipulated. In plain language, it means that someone involved with a game, match, or race did something contrary to the rules to affect its outcome. That someone could be an athlete, support personnel or an official. 

In 2022, Sportradar Integrity Services saw a huge jump in suspicious matches. According to their annual review of data gathered by their Universal Fraud Detection System, Betting Corruption and Match-Fixing in 2022, they detected a 34% increase in suspicious matches from 2021. In total, 1,212 suspicious matches were detected in 92 countries on five continents, and across 12 sports.

On home soil

The bulk of these suspicious matches were detected in Europe, Asia and South America, but Canada is not immune to competition manipulation. We have a cautionary tale of our own. In 2016, an investigation found that over 40% of Canadian Soccer League (CSL) matches had been manipulated. The semi-pro players were receiving nominal compensation to supplement their day jobs and, as a result, they were targeted to fix games that were broadcast in Asia and were bet on primarily in unregulated Asian betting markets.

According to Interpol, over $100 million was bet on CSL matches over a 3-year period and every club in the league was involved. Canada Soccer (formerly the Canadian Soccer Association) cut ties with the league.

No league, match, or competition is too small for match fixers. In fact, small-scale competitions, contested by poorly compensated athletes, are the most susceptible to competition manipulation.

Pilot project and competition manipulation policy template

When considering these developments (the legislative change, billions in revenue, and the reports on the suspicious matches) as a complete package, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) sees competition manipulation as a very real threat to the integrity of sport and athlete safety. If sports fans start to think the results of games have been manipulated and are predetermined, they’ll lose faith and eventually tune out. If athletes are accepting gifts and favours in exchange for throwing a match or sharing information about their team, they risk their personal safety and retribution from match fixers if things don’t go as planned. Neither of these outcomes are good for athletes or sport at large.   

To address another major threat to sport integrity, the CCES administers the Canadian Anti-Doping Program (CADP), a national program to detect and deter doping that incorporates international best practices, including an extensive education program. With this model in mind, the CCES partnered with the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) on a pilot project to combat competition manipulation that features a template policy for national sport organizations (NSOs). To date, five participating NSOs have implemented a customized Competition Manipulation Policy that is consistent with the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions (IOC Code).

To support the policy, the CCES rolled out an e-learning course called Understanding Competition Manipulation that explains the basics, including who’s involved, what’s at risk, and how to recognize if you’ve been targeted for a manipulation scheme. This course is available to anyone and has been completed more than 20,000 times!

Reporting competition manipulation

A policy without a method for reporting wrongdoing or enforcement has little value, so every organization in the pilot project must provide a mechanism for athletes and members to report competition manipulation. In early 2023, the CCES Integrity Hotline launched to provide a means for secure and confidential reporting of both doping and competition manipulation, which NSOs in the pilot project were invited to use. The hotline is managed by the CCES’s intelligence team, who can use reports to start investigations when warranted.

While new to the competition manipulation game, the hotline (formerly known as Report Doping) is a proven tool in the fight against doping. In fiscal 2022, it received 91 tips, 5 of which led to anti-doping rule violations, and there’s already been reporting activity on the competition manipulation side as well.

What comes next?

From a global perspective, Canada is playing catch-up on this issue. The CCES is focused on learning new approaches and best practices from government organizations, international sport federations, and sport integrity experts who are actively addressing competition manipulation.

Representatives from many of these organizations and more will be at the 2023 Symposium on Competition Manipulation and Gambling in Sport, May 30-31 in Toronto, Ontario. The CCES and McLaren Global Sport Solutions, with support from the COC, are co-hosting the symposium. The goal of the event is to develop a common way forward that will protect sport and benefit the gaming industry, and to develop a comprehensive national program for all national and multi-sport organizations.

Follow @EthicsinSPORT in sport for more information.

Earning a roster position as a nationally carded athlete is no easy task (“carding” refers to financial assistance from Sport Canada’s Athlete Assistance Program). Athletes spend years working on their craft to represent Canada on the international stage. The length of time spent in the role as a national athlete varies across sports and between athletes, however, 1 commonality is every athlete’s inevitable retirement from sport. For some, the exit from sport is voluntary, while others may retire involuntarily due to roster deselection, injury, or life circumstances.  

Athlete retirement has been associated with numerous psychological, social, physiological and emotional consequences. Recent research suggests that high performance athletes should proactively prepare for life after sport by engaging in sport-life balance. Athletes can work towards this by investing in areas of their life outside of sport such as education and family, as well as financial, social and professional development. Engaging in practices that promote sport-life balance does not imply an athlete should decrease their focus or commitment towards their pursuit of sport excellence. Rather, the concept of balance positions the athlete to have higher life satisfaction while perceiving positive sport experiences as they train for excellence (Alfermann et coll., 2004; Lavallee 2019).

For Canadian high performance athletes, Game Plan offers free support for carded athletes to foster an improved sport-life balance, optimize sport performance and plan for their post-sport career. Available to active and retired athletes, Game Plan’s resources include education, career, community, skill development and health support. Despite the curation of world-class retirement support, Game Plan’s resources are underutilized. The reason for this remains unclear.  

After over a decade of servicing Canadian athletes, researchers examined Game Plan’s usage data from 2019-2021 to garner an understanding of how active and retired athletes in national sport organizations (NSOs) use Game Plan’s resources. The data outlined Game Plan’s usage rate from the following services domains: career, education, health, education, networking, skill development and other. All users were listed as unidentifiable randomized codes that solely indicated their NSO affiliation, and the year and frequency in which specific resources were accessed.

This blog provides insight into how Game Plan’s resources are being utilized by athletes across the sport system and identify barriers athletes face in accessing Game Plan’s support for their proactive and reactive retirement needs.

Internal barriers and resource usage

A recent article examined Canadian athletes’ ability to plan and prepare for their retirement (Brassard et coll., 2022). The authors identified 3 environmental styles fostered by coaches, support staff, and high-performance directors that influence an athletes’ ability to plan and prepare for retirement:

Within these styles, athletes experience internal barriers such as a lack of support for activities outside of sport (such as academics, work, family) from coaches, and too few opportunities provided by NSOs to prepare for career transitions.

Beyond these internal barriers, Game Plan usage discrepancies between mainstream and Para athletes indicate there may be other contributing factors. Based on the usage data from 2019 to 2021, able-bodied athletes are accessing Game Plan resources more than Para athletes. Factors like retirement age (for example, mainstream athletes often retire earlier than Para athletes), athletic identity around retirement (for example, self-esteem scores have been reported as lower in Para athletes who retired involuntarily when compared to those who retired voluntarily), and narratives around the topic of retirement (Guerrero & Martin, 2018; Marin-Urquiza et coll., 2018) may be some of these contributing factors. 

How funding influences access

NSOs are non-profit organizations that rely on various forms of funding to support sport advancement in Canada. Most NSOs rely on the Government of Canada, membership fees, and other organizations to provide financial support, such as the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee. In addition, some organizations receive targeted high performance funding from the Government of Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee, and the Canadian Paralympic Committee based on recommendations from Own the Podium to advance the performance potential of athletes through funding staff, coaches, access to competitions, organizational facilities, and high performance organizations. Own the Podium assesses the performance potential of each sport organization, recommending the appropriate amount of funding.

Predictably, there are funding disparities across sport organizations due to different performance potential measurements. However, there appears to be a trickledown effect regarding how funding influences athletes’ access to Game Plan resources. For example, the Game Plan usage data showed high athlete usage from athletes in more highly funded sport organizations compared to athletes in lower funded organizations.

Regardless of sport organization funding, all carded athletes have access to free Game Plan support. However, this latter group of athletes appears to be missing out on opportunities to proactively and reactively receive support to prepare for and adapt to life after sport.  

One leads to another

Among the thousands of athletes who utilized Game Plan’s support, the vast majority accessed Game Plan’s resources on multiple occasions, and at times, for various forms of support, including health, education, community, career or skill development. This widespread repeat usage emphasizes the importance of initiating that first meeting with a Game Plan advisor.  

In order for an athlete to engage in proactive preparation for retirement, communication on the why, where, and how of a positive sport-life balance in transitioning from sport becomes pivotal.

As the first meeting with a Game Plan advisor is designed towards addressing those questions, NSOs can do a great deal for their athletes by facilitating that initial engagement. As such, organizations can do the following to support an athlete in getting to that initial meeting:  

  1. Familiarization
  1. Lean on the experts
  1. Invest in sustainability:
Fig 1: Considerations and strategies for sport organizations seeking to improve athlete engagement in Game Plan resources

Conclusion 

It can be incredibly difficult to predict the length of time an athlete will spend training and competing in their sport, the injuries and triumphs they may endure, the levels of success they will achieve, or the exact moment and reason that will lead them to retire. Sport organizations in Canada have made vast improvements to provide athletes with holistic forms of support that address athletes’ technical and tactical performance, as well as their strength, conditioning, mental, nutritional and physical performance.

Progress is needed to minimize barriers athletes experience to accessing proactive and reactive retirement support. With the abundance of athlete retirement research studies that  highlight the mental, emotional, social, professional and physical challenges athletes face due to their lack of retirement preparation, change in how sport organizations perceive, promote, and prioritize retirement is necessary.  

Learn more about Game Plan https://mygameplan.ca/  

Everyone knows to warm up before competing, but have you heard of “priming” beforehand? Priming is a round of non-tiring exercise that is done the day before or morning of a competition. Research shows priming may improve performance, as well as reduce athlete pre-competition stress.

Highlights

Every day, athletes are faced with small decisions that have potential to impact their performance, recovery and health. Often these decisions relate to things that may seem comparatively inconsequential to the average person, and can be as simple as what foods to eat, or what activities to avoid or participate in. When it comes to cannabis use, things are no different.

In October of 2018, recreational cannabis use became legal across all of Canada for individuals who are 19 years and older. Data gathered from the years following the legalization of recreational cannabis use suggest that one quarter of all Canadian adults, and nearly half of all Canadians aged 20-24, have used cannabis in the past year (Government of Canada, 2021). Clearly, cannabis use in Canada is widespread amongst the general population. But what should athletes be considering when it comes to using or avoiding cannabis?

In this article I will provide a research-informed exploration of the current state of cannabis use in relation to sport in Canada and provide advice for how sport organizations should approach the topic of cannabis with athletes.

Contextualizing cannabis

To start off, it’s important to understand what cannabis is. The term “cannabis” refers to a group of plant species containing unique molecules called “phytocannabinoids,” or more generally, “cannabinoids.” There are hundreds of different cannabinoid molecules, however, the 2 that most people will be familiar with are called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is the primary cannabinoid responsible for causing the psychological effects of cannabis that many users are seeking. In other words, THC is responsible for the “high” that many people associate with cannabis use. CBD on the other hand, is generally not thought to cause psychological effects, since it interacts with chemical receptors in the body’s tissues in a different way than THC (Ahston, 2001). While many people tend to focus on the way each of these cannabinoids affect our brain, it’s important to understand that both may have effects on other tissues in our bodies. This is just one of the reasons that athletes should approach cannabis use cautiously.

While any adult in Canada older than 19 can legally use cannabis that contains THC or CBD recreationally, the picture is more complicated for athletes. Firstly, many sport organizations and regulatory bodies list cannabinoids as banned substances in some shape or form. For example, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) bans the use of cannabinoids during the competition phases of the season (notably, CBD is exempt) (World Anti-Doping Agency, 2022). This is also relevant to Canadian athletes participating in U-SPORTS competitions, as these regulations are also enforced by U-SPORTS and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, n.d.). Secondly, because cannabis has been illegal for a long time, research on the safety of cannabis use has been challenging to conduct in the general population (Haney, 2020) with even less work having been done with athletes (Burr et coll, 2021). Therefore, it is extremely important for athletes to understand that very little research exists surrounding many of the applications of cannabis in sport. For some athletes, each of these facts may be enough to deter from cannabis use, however, research suggests many athletes still use cannabis recreationally (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2018; Peretti-Watel et coll, 2003), or even for performance enhancement (Lorente et coll, 2005).

Exploring reasons athletes use cannabis

Like many other people, athletes report using cannabis for reasons completely unrelated to sport, including recreational use. In 2018, a study conducted by the NCAA on its own student athletes reported that as many as 25% of athletes use cannabis recreationally (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2018). In further support of this study, a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature identified similar lifetime and past-year prevalence of cannabis use in athletic populations from countries other than the USA (Docter et coll, 2020).

In Canada, the practice of recreational cannabis use is perfectly legal, assuming the athlete is 19 years or older, and the nature of use does not contradict substance use policies of sporting body regulating their respective sport. Nevertheless, recreational cannabis use, even outside of the competition phase of a season may still present significant risks to athletes. Many cannabinoids can be detected for up to days after the time of use and well after any effects have subsided, in biological samples (Huestis et coll, 1995). Therefore, it is entirely possible that cannabis use outside of, but in near proximity to competition, could trigger a violation. In an effort to avoid these situations, WADA tests numerous cannabinoids as “threshold substances” meaning that a certain level of cannabinoid has to be present in a sample, making it a little more lenient than a zero-tolerance style policy. However, despite the use of thresholds, cannabis related anti-doping violations are not uncommon in Canadian athletics (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, n.d.).

Outside of recreational use, there is a growing body of evidence that some athletes use cannabis with the intention of improving performance. A survey of ultra-marathon runners showed that cannabinoids are one of the most widely utilized performance enhancing substances in the sport (Campian et coll, 2018). The prevailing thought for how cannabis may improve performance in this sport is that some of the reported effects of THC, such as reduced anxiety, nausea, and pain, may allow athletes to mitigate exercise related anxiety, pain, or exertion, and subsequently perform better.

To date, there is very little research studying cannabis use before exercise. The first studies found that patients with cardiovascular disease reached exhaustion sooner during an exercise test after using cannabis (Aronow & Cassidy, 1974, 1975) Studies in healthy individuals show similar but slightly different results. The first study using healthy participants showed that at a given heart rate, participants were not able to work as hard following cannabis use (Steadward & Singh, 1975). Based on this finding, authors concluded that maximal exercise performance would be reduced. A later study published on the topic that actually did examine maximal exercise after cannabis use showed that participants were unable to exercise for as long during an exercise test of increasing difficulty, providing direct evidence that cannabis did indeed negatively impact maximal exercise performance in healthy individuals (Renaud & Cormier, 1986).

While these studies provide some evidence that cannabis containing THC reduces exercise performance, there are a few caveats that should be considered. The primary caveat to all these studies is that none of these studies utilized exercise tests which mimic real-life athletic competitions, nor do they match the demands of the sports in which athletes most report use of cannabis for athletic performance enhancement. So, to fully understand how cannabis impacts performance, studies should aim to use more relevant exercise tests, particularly ones that mimic the demands of the sports from which athletes report cannabis use.

Additionally, the recreational cannabis available to athletes in today’s consumer market is much different from the cannabis available at the time of these early studies. Today, cannabis users have many more options for how they use cannabis. Although many people think of cannabis as something that is smoked or inhaled, modern day consumers can also eat or drink cannabis products. Recently, a study conducted at Colorado State University looked at the effects of edible cannabis products on numerous different cycling performance tests. Their results differ from the studies conducted 40-50 years ago, showing that cannabis had no effect on performance in the tests they used (Ewell et coll, 2022), nor did they affect the way the cardiovascular system responded to exercise. While all these studies provide valuable insight into how cannabis impacts performance, it should be acknowledged how many questions remain unanswered. For example, does the inhalation method matter? What if cannabis is used further out from when exercise begins? How about if we alter the cannabinoid composition within cannabis?

Each of these questions highlight the fact that right now, there is much more that is not known than is known about how cannabis impacts performance. While there is evidence that cannabis either negatively impacts, or does not impact performance, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that it has any benefits. Furthermore, very little research has systematically evaluated whether cannabis use prior to exercise threatens athlete safety or introduces any additional risk to health. This alone should be a good enough reason for athletes to avoid cannabis use before exercise. Given this, and the fact that cannabis use is banned in competition for many sports, athletes should avoid cannabis use with exercise. Even if cannabis could provide some benefits that outweigh these risks, there is very little existing evidence to suggest that cannabis used in conjunction with exercise should provide any kind of benefit. Athletes, coaches, and sporting bodies should keep a keen eye out for new research in this area that will hopefully emerge in coming years, and further inform our knowledge on how cannabis use impacts performance.

What the research says about CBD and exercise

While the use of whole cannabis within sport is relatively common, many will be aware that the use of CBD in sport is even more popular. In fact, informed choices surrounding CBD are arguably even more important to make, given that CBD is not a banned substance by WADA, and consequently, many sporting bodies. CBD has become an increasingly popular supplement for recovery and performance due to a range of claims including anti-inflammation, antioxidant properties, sleep promotion and pain relief (Gamelin et coll, 2020; Rojas-Valverde, 2021). The prevailing thought is that many of these effects would be beneficial for recovery from intense exercise or activities that are physically demanding on our bodies’ tissues.

While this thought may appear intuitive at the surface, there are many caveats regarding what research exists to support use of CBD by athletes, and whether these effects would be beneficial for athletes. Let’s first address arguably the most prominent claim for CBD, which is that its anti-inflammatory properties are beneficial for recovery. A popular method of testing how well something aids recovery in a research lab is by testing how well athletic performance can be preserved by a given intervention, following some sort of demanding exercise that results in some degree of muscle damage. In other words, studies will often have participants complete an exercise bout, and then measure either tissue damage, or performance in a subsequent bout with and without the intervention (in this case, CBD).

To date, there have been 3 studies (Cochrane-Snyman et coll, 2021; Crossland et coll, 2022; Isenmann et coll, 2021) with human participants which examine whether CBD is effective in mitigating muscle damage and performance decrements associated with resistance exercise. These studies have shown mixed but largely disappointing results. One of these studies showed that CBD can reduce blood markers of inflammation and muscle damage following damaging exercise, and that CBD may have allowed participants to recover back-squat performance 72 hours post-exercise (Isenmann et coll, 2021). However, the 2 other studies examining how CBD might affect muscle damage and fatigue showed that CBD performed no different than placebo, in any measure, performance- or inflammation-related (Cochrane-Snyman et coll, 2021; Crossland et coll, 2022).

Therefore, these studies provide little evidence, if any, suggesting that any potential anti-inflammatory effects of CBD are beneficial for recovery. It’s also important to note that the use of any anti-inflammatory drugs following training may not have intended effects, as studies have shown that inflammation may be important for adapting to training, and these types of products may blunt this response (Owens et coll, 2019). When it comes to pain mitigation following exercise, there is even less research. While there are no experimental laboratory studies assessing whether CBD alters the pain associated with exercise, a survey of rugby athletes demonstrated that although as many as 80% of athletes who used CBD did so with the intent of improving recovery or mitigating pain, only 14% perceived any benefit (Kasper et coll, 2020).

Research on the ability of CBD to improve sleep in athletes is about as equally scarce. Most of the research to date examining the effects of CBD on sleep have used clinical populations rather than athletes, with only one study reporting that CBD improved self-reported sleep onset and perceived quality (Carlini & Cunha, 1981). Another study in healthy participants showed no effects on subjective sleep quality, or objective measures of sleep quality following CBD use (Linares et coll, 2018).

While CBD has mainly been studied as a recovery aid for athletes, there is also potential that some of its purported effects related to benefitting pain and anxiety could create some utility for performance enhancement. To date, only one study has examined the acute effects of CBD on exercise performance, and the body’s response to exercise (Sahinovic et coll, 2022). A research group out of the University of Sydney asked participants to run both at a steady pace and at increasing speeds up to exhaustion after consuming CBD orally. The results of this study showed that despite small differences in the maximal amount of oxygen consumed and feelings of pleasure during exercise after CBD intake, time to exhaustion was not affected, suggesting that CBD does little to alter performance, and likely has only minor effects on the physiological and psychological responses to exercise.

When turning to the research, it doesn’t take long to realize that many of the claims tied to CBD use are largely unproven, and much work needs to be done before athletes should feel like using CBD is unequivocally a good idea. At the moment little evidence exists to suggest that CBD has any benefit for athletes at all, either when it comes to recovery, or performance. In addition to the lack of physiological benefits, CBD may possess its own anti-doping risks. Although CBD is not generally a banned substance, CBD products may actually contain THC, a banned substance. A growing body of research has identified that many cannabis products, including CBD products, are not accurately labelled (Johnson et coll, 2022; Vandrey et coll, 2015). Another analysis of 23 hemp products (a form of cannabis many CBD products are made from) showed that many of them contained a wide range of cannabinoids, with approximately 30% of them containing enough cannabinoids to cause an anti-doping rule violation if samples would have been taken within 8 hours of use (Mareck et coll, 2022).

Final thoughts

For athletes, coaches, and sporting bodies, the landscape of how to approach cannabis use in sport in 2023 remains uncertain. Since legalization of recreational use in Canada, athletes in the country have never had greater access to a range of products marketed for a vast array of claims that may seem attractive. That said, there remains significant gaps in the research that must be filled before cannabis or derivative cannabinoid products can be confidently recommended to any athlete seeking benefits from their use. Given the risks associated with product contamination, and potential unknowns about product safety, there is little reason to suggest that at the moment, any possible benefits of cannabinoid use in sport are outweighed by the current risks.

Tomorrow is Earth Day and the sport sector has a role in protecting our environment and embracing sustainability. The Canadian Olympic Committee has compiled a list of “Team Canada Climate Action Resources” that showcases how Team Canada is doing its part to protect the planet.

Researchers suggest that the best way to promote fair sport is to move away from a solely doping-centric focus towards promoting high levels of integrity. In this 2022 article, researchers question the usefulness of the term “clean sport,” which is theorized differently as “drug-free sport” versus “cheating-free” sport.

According to 4-time Olympian and mental health advocate Clara Hughes, “[mental health] resources need to be more readily available and clearly laid out as to what they are, where they are and how to access them.” To address this gap, the Mental Health Strategy for High Performance Sport in Canada aims to equip sport participants, leaders and stakeholders with the mental health knowledge, skills and support to thrive throughout their career and beyond.