On June 4th and 5th 2025, partners in the GLDF4CleanSport project gathered in Paris for their last in-person meeting as guests of AFLD (France’s Anti-Doping Agency) to review progress and plan the project’s final steps.
Doping is a major threat to clean sport, and every year, thousands of anti-doping practitioners across the world strive tirelessly and with high ethical standards to ensure doping free competition. But, as anti-doping becomes ever more complex and demands increase, there is a growing need for a workforce which is more highly trained, globally harmonised and constantly upskilling to meet new challenges.
This is the reason for GLDF4CleanSport, an EU-funded Erasmus+ sport project jointly led by EOSE and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and gathering partners from European national anti-doping organisations and global sport federations. The project forms part of WADA’s Global Learning and Development Framework (GLDF) which is being rolled out world-wide.
Since the project began in October 2023, the consortium has:
- Carried out the first ever survey and mapping of the global anti-doping workforce, exploring its size, demographics, professional responsibilities and training needs.
- Used EOSE’s ‘7-Step Model’ to work with expert practitioners to develop professional standards for four important anti-doping functions: Testing, Compliance, Major Events Organisers and Government Advisers.
- Designed and piloted four blended learning courses based on the professional standards.
- Trained a cohort of expert trainers to deliver the courses.
The Paris meeting reviewed these achievements and began to complete the final products:
- An online self-assessment tool to help anti-doping practitioners to identify their current level of competence, the areas of professional practice where they need further development and signpost them to new courses relevant to these needs.
- An online tool which will help anti-doping organisations evaluate how closely existing training programmes align with the professional standards.
- A Quality Assurance and Sustainability Plan which will outline the recommendations and priority actions needed to maintain the quality of the outputs and promote their implementation after the project closes.
At the close, everyone agreed that the Paris meeting was highly productive and underlined the powerful synergy which has grown within the consortium over the last three years. As well as taking part in intensive discussions, the partners were able to celebrate their achievements with a walking tour of the Montmartre district, followed by an official dinner, all capably organised by the AFLD colleagues.
One more online meeting is planned for the end of August to bring the project to a successful conclusion.
Aurélien Favre, EOSE’s Executive Director, reflected on what GLDF4CleanSport has achieved:
“EOSE is extremely proud to have worked with WADA and all the other partners on this vital project. For the first time, we have begun to build a clear picture of the global anti-doping workforce and its specific needs for training and development. The work which WADA, EOSE and the many, many international experts have already contributed to the professional standards and competency-based training courses has been outstanding. By September, we will have a suite of tools and training opportunities which will help every anti-doping practitioner, not just in Europe but across the world, to assess their professional practice and develop through high-quality online training. This could not have been achieved without the commitment and support of the GLDF4CleanSport partners. We are confident that the final piece in the puzzle – the Quality Assurance and Sustainability Plan – will ensure that the resources produced by this project will continue to have a significant impact on what we all want – keeping sport clean and fair for everyone.”
Partnership:
Contacts:
Aurélien Favre – EOSE Executive Director
Ben Gittus – EOSE Director of Standards
Youmna Saikali – WADA
