IFMA reiterates its position on Anti Doping amongst Athletes.

IFMA has recently reiterated its position that all athletes registered by National Federations for an IFMA event must have completed the Athlete Learning Program about Health and Anti-Doping (ALPHA) course on the WADA Anti-Doping E-Learning Platform, prior to the event. This will be required for all athletes in the 16-17, U23 and Senior Divisions.

Athletes Registered at Future IFMA events required to Complete WADA’s ALPHA 2.0 Anti-Doping eLearning course.

2019 was a difficult year for Muaythai athletes with respect to doping. Even with all efforts in anti-doping education, the numbers jumped from 4% to 7%.

From the positive tests acquired the following information was gathered:

Percent of offenders in which this was their First World Championship/Continental Event: 75%

Region: 75% Middle East, 12.5% South Asia, 12.5% South East Asia

Age Bracket: 37.5% Youth, 62.5% Adult

Gender: 37.5% Female, 62.5% Male

Recognized by NOC: 87.5% recognized

The main problem appears to be education amongst new athletes entering IFMA continental and international competitions. Moving forward, IFMA will be sending out surveys to see how N.F.s are educating their athletes and athlete entourage including coaches, parents, medical doctors, etc. For instance, we need to know how many I.F.’s have anti-doping programs available to their athletes, coaches and athlete personnel and how many International Federations actually make use and enforce these programs.

It appears that athletes who are new to IFMA competition tend to be caught for doping offenses. N.F.’s need to ensure that education is in place for new athletes entering the IFMA field of play. We will continue athlete education seminars and forums at IFMA World Championships (youth and adult) and Continental Events but by the time these athletes attend these seminars, if they are already offending, it is far too late. 

Education needs to be implemented before through National Federations seminars and N.F.s contacting their N.O.C. for tools and resources to educate their athletes about their rights and responsibilities to clean sport.

To access the ALPHA 2.0 course, each athlete must register on ADeL or log in to their existing account. As an “Athlete” type user, ALPHA 2.0 will be featured automatically on their home page. For other roles, you can find the course in the Library section.

In order to help users navigate through the platform, WADA has also created an ADeL User Guide, which should help users fully benefit from the ADeL platform.

Our Anti-Doping Administrator at the IFMA H.Q. will be periodically monitoring the activity on the platform on the Muaythai dashboard and we can see who has completed the course.

Only names that appear on our ADeL records as having completed and passed the course will be accredited at any future IFMA event. 

For more information on WADA’s ALPHA 2.0 Anti-Doping eLearning, please get in touch with us on [email protected]