Understanding AIU Whereabouts and why Tobi Amusan may be suspended for two years

As an elite athlete and a world record holder, Tobi Amusan knows that providing accurate and up-to-date whereabouts information is about protecting all athletes and ensuring athletics is a clean sport.

Amusan is equally not unaware of AIU's warning that from 2021 there will be a more stringent approach to whereabouts requirements.

As a Master’s degree holder and an elite athlete for about a decade, she knows that whereabouts failure will be recorded against an athlete on the World Athletics RTP under the following circumstances:

• Failure to submit your whereabouts by the required deadline (Filing Failure).
• Failed to update your whereabouts or you have not updated them as soon as possible after a change of circumstances (Filing Failure).
• You have filed your whereabouts on time but they are incomplete or inaccurate or insufficient to enable a Doping Officer to locate you for testing (training address missing, home address too vague, competition schedule missing or incomplete, no address of temporary accommodation during competition…) (Filing Failure).
• The Athletics Integrity Unit finds out that your whereabouts are inaccurate or incomplete following an unsuccessful attempt to test you (e.g. an athlete lives in a gated complex and fails to give instructions to the security gate to let the doping control officer in) (Filing Failure).
• You have filed whereabouts information but you are not available for testing at the location corresponding to your 60-minute time slot (Missed Test).

The consequences of the above could be severe.  Under the World Athletics Anti-Doping Rules, any combination of three whereabouts failures (Filing Failure and/or Missed Test) within a period of 12 months constitutes an anti-doping rule violation, for which the applicable sanction is two years' ineligibility subject to a reduction to a minimum of one year depending on your degree of fault.

Like anything, the whereabouts system isn’t perfect. There are academics and athletes who have raised objections to it, many citing a lack of privacy. Imagine if you had to tell your employer where you were going to be for an hour every day.

However elite athletes sign up to codes of conduct and they enter elite sports knowing that they will be tested. It’s something that comes with the job.

Perhaps controversially, yes. Life happens. Athletes are not robots without flaws. Their lives are just as messy and complicated as the rest of ours.

There could have been an accident. Their family member could be rushed to hospital. Unimaginable events could be happening that no one could have predicted. One missed test in some cases could be completely justified.

But missing three tests in 12 months? That’s completely inexcusable.

Anti-doping authorities aren’t trying to catch out clean athletes. They have a transparent set of procedures for athletes to abide by, with the goal we should all be aiming for – a clean sport. And if you’re not on board with that, then you really shouldn’t be an elite athlete.

By 234sportsng.com with information from World Athletics and AIU