UK Anti-Doping receives record number of whistleblower tip-offs

According to UK Anti-Doping, a record number of whistleblowers in the UK reported suspected sports doping to the country in 2024.

Last year, 211 reports of suspected doping misconduct were received by Ukad’s intelligence and investigations team.

In 2020, the Protect Your Sport initiative launched to encourage anonymous reporting of incidents.

And the number of reports has increased year on year since then, with Ukad receiving 184 across 25 sports in 2023, and 110 in 2022.

According to Ukad’s head of intelligence and investigations, Mario Theophanous, it is important for athletes and the sporting community to feel safe talking to us and that we normalize the reporting of doping in sport.

“One of the main reasons we release these reporting numbers is to let people know that you’re not alone because there are others like you who want to preserve the integrity of their sport,” said one journalist.

Ukad recently made a service that is anonymous to report suspected misconduct via SMS and WhatsApp.

Theophanous continued, “The service allows our investigators to respond to the person reporting in real time, gathering the necessary evidence to conduct our investigations.”