The annual update of the National Anti Doping Agency of Germany (NADA Germany) for state investigating authorities and World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratories took place this year as a hybrid event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. NADA Germany welcomed a small number of representatives from the Munich I and Freiburg public prosecutors' offices as well as from the Bühl district court and the Baden-Württemberg State Criminal Police Office on site. All other participants attended digitally.
In the first part of the event, NADA Germany gave a compact update on current topics in the areas of law, the Anti-doping Testing Programme, medicine and intelligence & investigation. The new process of results management/disciplinary proceedings under sports law, the pre-Olympic testing programme and the new Dried Blood Spot method were the focus of NADA Germany's presentations, as was the medical overview of the changes to the 2022 Prohibited List and case examples from sports-specific investigative work.
Current topics from the WADA-accredited laboratories as well as contributions from the customs investigation service and the focal public prosecutor's offices from Freiburg, Munich and Zweibrücken formed the second part of the three-hour programme.
Finally, NADA Germany presented a conceptual approach for establishing an advanced training and research initiative in criminal doping law. The aim is to contribute to a qualitative further development of anti-doping work in the context of criminal law through networking and knowledge exchange between experts.
The format gave the almost 40 investigators from customs, the Federal Criminal Police Office, the state criminal police offices and individual police departments as well as public prosecutors the opportunity to inform themselves and clarify open questions with the speakers. The participants also included representatives of AntiDoping Switzerland and NADA Austria.
This year, the hybrid meeting served as a substitute for the workshop for state investigation agencies that NADA Germany offers every year in Bonn, which was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic.
