07 July 2020

No boxers drug tested by UK Anti-Doping during coronavirus lockdown

No professional boxers were tested by UK Anti-Doping during the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

Across all sports between April and June, only 126 tests were conducted by the body compared with 2,212 during the same time frame in 2019.

UKAD also failed to test a single tennis player or rugby league player during the three-month period.

Of the 126 tests carried out, 84 were carried out on footballers as the Premier League made its return in mid-June.

Alternatively the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) have continued testing throughout lockdown.

But UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead defended the organisation’s lack of testing by insisting other measures had been used.

She said: "During the lockdown we stepped up activities elsewhere to keep sport clean and support athletes and those around them."

These other measures include UKAD’s online education courses and virtual anti-doping hearings.

Back in March, UKAD announced that dope testing would be substantially reduced during the pandemic.

However, Sapstead argued at the time that was not an invitation for athletes thinking about cheating to do so without detection.

"There will always be a minority that will seek to dope," she said.

"Whether that is now, when they think they are effectively off the radar of national anti-doping organisations, or at any other time, my message to them is very, very clear - we will continue to process intelligence, we will continue to monitor whereabouts, we will continue to monitor the raft of information we have available to us, such as the athlete biological passports.

"All of this helps us to gain a picture of what an athlete might be doing during this time. And if they think they are going to get away with it then they are strongly, strongly mistaken."

It is expected that testing will now begin to ramp up once more following the relaxing of measures from the government on July 4.

The best videos delivered daily

Watch the stories that matter, right from your inbox