This is the third Annual Report from the Anti-Doping Authority of the Netherlands. The organisation was established on 23 June 2006 with the merger of the Netherlands Centre for Doping Affairs and Doping Control Netherlands.
The Doping Authority has now proven that housing Prevention and Control in a single organisation was an important step. The merger has allowed us to operate more effectively. Public awareness of the organisation and the organisation’s profile also received a major boost.
Changes in policy were introduced in 2008 in areas where the Doping Authority is active, largely as a result of the decisions taken in late 2007 by the General Meeting of the NOC*NSF. Those decisions constituted the basis for the formation of the ‘registered testing pool’ and the obligations incumbent upon the people included in that testing pool.
As a result, it was possible to conduct doping controls in a more targeted and effective way and our educational activities reached many more elite athletes than in previous years.
The changes in the regulations have resulted in an increasing number of protracted follow-up investigations so that it can sometimes take more than six months before definitive decisions can be made about the result of a doping control. That is one of the reasons it was not possible to publish this annual report earlier.
We hope that this annual report will provide you with a clear picture of the work of our organisation.
The board of management
