New Whereabouts website for athletes

Drug Free Sport NZ is introducing a new whereabouts website to make it easier and faster for athletes to register their whereabouts details as part of their commitment to clean sport.

Athletes in Drug Free Sport NZ’s testing pools have to log whereabouts information quarterly so that they can be easily located for drug testing if needed.

Drug Free Sport NZ chief executive, Graeme Steel, says new site will go live on March 1, 2016 and replaces an old site which was slow and cumbersome.  

“We’ve listened to the feedback we’ve had from athletes who said the old site was sluggish and difficult to use.  

“We want to make it as easy as possible for athletes to comply with their whereabouts requirements so we’ve launched this new site to make the process easier and more straightforward for athletes,” he says.  

The new site is based on the Athlete Express whereabouts site introduced by the US Anti-Doping Agency in 2015.  It has been thoroughly tested and has received much positive feedback in the US.

The new site can be used on a range of digital platforms, including desktop, mobile and tablet and is accessed the same way as the old site via the Drug Free Sport NZ website.

Mr Steel says the new site is more intuitive and gathers information by asking athletes a series of questions rather than relying on them to remember to log every detail.

“This new approach means we’ll collect comprehensive information for all athletes in our testing pools which will enable us to better plan and coordinate our testing programme.  It will be extremely useful in the lead-up to the Rio Olympics,” he says.

The new site includes special features to help athletes co-ordinate their whereabouts information, including the ability to sync the whereabouts calendar to other digital calendars.

It also features mapping tools to ensure address details are accurate and up-to-date in order to reduce the likelihood for inputting errors.

Mr Steels says Drug Free Sport acknowledges that filing whereabouts information can be a chore for athletes.

“We appreciate the effort athletes go to in ensuring that their whereabouts information is up-to-date and comprehensive.  We know this can sometimes be difficult and that’s why we want to do whatever we can to make this process easier.

“Clean athletes know that the whereabouts system is a key component of any anti-doping regime because it provides agencies with information that enables ‘surprise’ testing.  Anything we can do to ensure this system works better can only be a good thing for clean sport,” Mr Steel says.

If you’re an athlete who needs to file whereabouts information, Drug Free Sport NZ will have been in touch with your directly with details about changes to the website.

Find out more at Whereabouts.