By George Aluo
President of World Aquatics, Husain Al-Musallam has declared that the world body in charge of all aquatic sports will continue to ensure a level playing field for all athletes.
Al-Musallam stated this while expressing satisfaction with the efforts being made to fight doping and ensure clean sports.
World Aquatics in a recent report disclosed that in 2022, a total of 5835 samples were collected from 1428 individual athletes from 101 National Federations across all aquatic sports: swimming, water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving. The samples included 3766 urine samples and 2069 blood samples, all of which were subjected to rigorous testing.
Reacting to the efforts, Al-Musallam stated… “This year’s (2022) testing numbers demonstrate our unwavering commitment to ensuring clean sport and fair competitions for all aquatics athletes in all aquatic sports. Through our partnership with the International Testing Agency (ITA) and the leadership of the AQIU, we continue to ensure that state-of-the-art independent testing methods are in place to combat doping and ensure our waters are clean. All athletes deserve a level playing field.”
A breakdown of the tests carried out shows that tests by gender were balanced, with female athletes accounting for 50.7% of tests compared to male athletes at 49.3%.
Europe accounted for 56.6% of tests followed by America (21.6%), Asia (10.9%), Oceania (7.7%) and Africa (3.17%).
With regard to testing across World Aquatics sport disciplines, swimming accounted for 66% of all tests, followed by water polo (14%), open water (9%), artistic swimming (5%) and diving and high diving (4%).