Free of drugs

THE last batch of tests conducted by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADC) have all been negative.This from chairman Dr Adrian Lorde who was pleased to have some good news following two positiveresults this month. “The NADC conducted a number of in-competition tests at the National [Track and Field] Championships on June 25, 26 and 27 and there were no adverse analytical findings. It was random events and random athletes over the three days.”The tests were done at a WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) accredited laboratory and the results were received on Thursday night.“This is part of the doping controls that the NADC has been doing. We tested, again randomly, a number of athletes who were going to the CAC [Central American and Caribbean Games], and again there were no adverse analytical findings.For the CAC Games, Lorde said they tried to test across all of the 22 disciplines where Barbados would be represented, but there were a few instances where athletes were out of the island.Lorde told SUNSPORT they had conducted tests at various competitions and across several sports over the past six-and-half months.“This is the largest number of tests and the largest number of sports we have done so far because we have more trained and qualified doping control officers,” he said.There was a retraining and certification workshop here in December, bringing the number of active doping control officers to 12. (SAT)