Boxing Doping: Legal Aspects

Boxing doping: Legal aspects

Despite all its conquests and unforgettable characters, boxing appears in a ranking nothing worth pride. According to the figures recompiled by the WADA (World Anti -Doping Agency), it is among the 10 disciplines with more cases of positive doping in the history of sport.

Is there an imperceptible doping in boxing?

At the end of 2017, sports medicine was revolutionized by an alarming finding of two doctors from the Wada. According to them, knowledge and technologies from gene therapy were being used to achieve an imperceptible doping. In these data that were known, the voluntary injection of a virus was analyzed in the organism of the pugilist, capable of modifying his genetic information.

This talk by Nicholas Rizzo and Raúl Saucedo during the 96th. Annual Convention by the World Boxing Association;A completely new and quite bleak panorama was revealed. These famous cases have evidenced that laboratory tests and sports regulations do not account for the new methodologies and doping techniques in boxing.

On the one hand, technological gaps prevented Vada laboratories from detecting cases such as the so -called ‘genetic doping’. On the other hand, even if the presence of a certain virus in the pugilist organism would be detected, it would be unlikely to sanction it.

It is a practice that is not expressly prohibited in sports legislation or in the codes of the world anti -doping agency. Is it a lagoon in the regulations?

Therefore, the prevention and the fight we could call on the future of doping in boxing, would inevitably depend on the progress of science and sports medicine. As well as the update of the legal and ethical regulations that govern the practice of sport internationally.

Legal aspects of boxing doping: the importance of constantly updating

The previous case is an obvious example that the legal aspects of boxing must be constantly updated. It is not logical to pretend that, in a world that changes more and more rapidly, laws and regulations always remain the same. Because both sport and athlete will be in constant transformation, following the pace of society.

If we speak specifically about doping, we clearly see how the modernization of the concept itself has allowed to advance significantly in its prevention. Traditionally, it was interpreted as doping or doping is understood as the use of prohibited or non -regulatory chemical elements, elements or substances.

But over the years and the emergence of new methodologies, doping was taking a broader dimension in the sports field. And after the publication of the world code anti doping of the world anti doping agency (WADA-AMA), the concept has begun to incorporate any act that violates anti doping rules in sports.

This broader understanding has also allowed to speak legally of doping beyond the athlete. For several years, coaches, sports doctors and other members of the coaching staff, medical and manager also, can incur Doping’s crime.

What is considered loyally doping in boxing and sport in general? 

Basically, any practice or act that violates the standards of the world anti doping code. Next, we mention some examples that can be classified as sports doping:

• Use prohibited methods or substances (or try to do) during competencies or sporting events.
• Present prohibited substances, as its metabolisms or markers, in the bloodstream, urine or other body fluids of athletes.
• The rejection of providing samples or evading clinical/doctors without justified causes.
• Do any type of deception or fraud in controls and studies, either how to adulterate the results.
• Absent from scheduled tests out of competition.
• Buy, sell or have prohibited substances and methods (or try).
• Facilitate, apply or prescribe prohibited chemicals to athletes, as well as stimulate or encourage them to consume, buy, sell them or facilitate them to other athletes.
• Found, promote or participate in prohibited associations.
• Act as an accomplice of any given behaviors mentioned above, covering up or not reporting said infractions to the competent authorities.

After the controversies due to genetic doping in boxing, Wada has been forced to also incorporate gene therapy into its prohibited list. For all the above, at present and according to Wada, they can be accused of the crime of doping who practice “non -therapeutic use of cells, genes or genetic elements, or the modulation of gene expression, in order to increase athletic performance’.