Celebrating 15 years of UKAD: A reflection from Tony Josiah, Director of Education, Insight and Global Engagement

UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) celebrates 15 years as the UK’s National Anti-Doping Organisation in December. We assumed the responsibility of the UK’s National Anti-Doping Organisation on 14 December 2009, marking a crucial development in the fight against doping in sport.

Today UKAD continues to build towards a culture of clean sport, both here in the UK and internationally, championing and supporting clean athletes and their athlete support personnel.

To mark the milestone, we spoke to colleagues who have been here from the start, to learn more about our foundation and history over the past 15 years.

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Working for UKAD by Tony Josiah, Director of Education, Insight and Global Engagement

Working for UKAD was a natural fit for me. I knew I wanted to be part of it. I think I was probably at Drug-Free Sport (UK Sport’s Directorate) for about nine years before UKAD was set up. When UKAD first started I was working in the Results Team as Results Manager. There were a lot of challenges in my world up to this point. I worked in an era before the World Anti-Doping Code was in existence and anti-doping was previously governed by the national governing bodies of sports.

It was very exciting when UKAD came along – more people, more resources, a new mindset. It was great to see the various new departments develop, including Legal, Intelligence and Investigations, Science and Medicine, Risk and Information and Communications Teams. In addition, we also had expanded Testing and Education Teams. But it was scary too. You realise that, okay we're now independent. It's all down to us.

When I look back, I see the legacy. I was there when we set up many of the panels and processes within the legal team that we have today. And I remember the reason why UKAD was formed – the background to the UNESCO International Convention and National Anti-Doping Policy and the Council of Europe International Convention against Doping in Sport, for example. ?

I am really proud of UKAD’s work culture and approach to staff wellbeing. You can always say that we are fair, and as work culture goes, that UKAD is a decent organisation in terms of how colleagues are treated.

Anti-doping has changed in the past 15 years. The whole international environment has greatly improved in terms of collaboration at an international level. And I've seen bodies like CAHAMA (Ad hoc European Committee for the World Anti-Doping Agency) really coming to their own.

And at UKAD, education has really come on in those 15 years. We're listening to athletes more. E-learning has come on. This is another way that athletes want to learn. Education even has its own WADA international standard. And now, UKAD’s education-first, athlete-first principle is a really important philosophy.

Three words to sum up my experience of working at UKAD: unique, challenging and fulfilled.

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