Janie Soublière
Lawyer, Soublière Sports Law
Montreal - Canada
Integrity is at the heart of the fight against doping in sport.
Everyone involved in football, coaches, players, managers, owners, including we, as jurists, are told that we each have an intrinsic role to play in the ongoing objective of protecting and maintaining the “integrity” of football.
But - what is integrity? And how does it apply to the world anti-doping program, to which both FIFA and UEFA currently adhere and are bound to follow?
The Oxford English dictionary offers two definitions of integrity.
The first: “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.”
The second: " The state of being whole and undivided.”
Integrity and the Fight against Doping in Sport
Applying the definitions of integrity to the fight against doping in sport, on the one hand, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles relates to the roles and responsibilities of each individual involved in sport: athletes who need soundness of moral character to avoid cheating and seeking performance enhancing benefits from prohibited substances, national and international federations who must adopt, respect and implement all applicable anti-doping rules and not recoil from applying them when warranted, legal counsel who seek to protect the interests of their clients, be they athletes or federations, and finally, arbitrators - who as custodians of all applicable anti-doping rules, need to render reasoned, impartial and just awards.
On the other hand, the state of being whole and undivided relates to an effective binding harmonization of anti-doping rules. It reflects the fact that all...
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