IWF120y/23 – 2019: IWF and ITA together in the fight against doping

Starting in 2019 – the agreement had been signed in November 2018, at the IWF World Championships in Ashgabat (TKM) – the IWF partnered with the International Testing Agency (ITA) for the development of a transparent and independent strategy in the fight against doping. Since then, this collaboration has been pivotal for the development of weightlifting and the improvement of the IWF’s status within the Olympic Movement. In 2025 – the contract with the ITA has been recently renovated until the end of 2028 – the International Testing Agency is responsible for all activities related to IWF’s anti-doping programme. These activities include: Risk assessment; Test distribution planning and management; In and out-of-competition testing; Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) management; Athlete Biological Passport programme; Result management; Long-term storage and re-analysis of samples; Support to the IWF’s educational programmes. This last point is of paramount importance, and regular Clean Sport seminars are organised within the frame of the IWF major events, namely the Junior and Youth World Championships. These initiatives aim at providing senior and younger athletes, as well as their support personnel, all the relevant information on this topic (under the general motto “I Lift Clean”). Commenting on this fruitful relationship, IWF President Mohammed Jalood recently said: “We are extremely satisfied with this partnership, as it allowed us to pursue in a transparent and independent way our anti-doping strategy. Weightlifting definitively changed from the moment we partnered with the ITA – and this was essential for our credibility and growth as an Olympic sport. We are now a respected International Federation that operated a structural change in the way it looks at this essential area.”