'Barbadian athletes are dope-free'

Bridgetown,Barbados - Barbadian athletes are not using any performance enhancing drugs, National Anti-Doping Council (NADC) chairman Adrian Lorde has said.

Lorde’s disclosure comes after the results from all drug tests done on Barbadian track and field athletes at the National Athletics Championships came back negative Friday.

“The doping controls conducted by the NADC at the meet held from June 21 to 23 showed no adverse analytical findings and the results were received from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) accredited laboratory. This indicates that our locally based and overseas trained athletes are adhering to our policy of clean sports and playing true,” Lorde said.

The chairman explained that since 2012, the NADC had increased its focus on unannounced out-of-competition testing, although it still did in-competition and out-of-competition tests in various sports.

“Our sportspersons have been willing to give their whereabouts and this allows our trained doping control officers to visit the homes, gyms, training sites and even workplaces of the athletes to collect urine samples for overseas analysis. We do not think the recent results mean that there is no doping problem in Barbados because we have intelligence which states otherwise,” he said.