The Official
Website of the
International
Sailing Federation

'The Third World Conference will be an important opportunity to take stock of how far the fight against doping has come and to identify its next critical tasks,' said WADA Chairman Richard POUND following a two day meeting of WADA's Executive Committee and Foundation Board. 'We look forward to working with the city of Madrid to prepare and host the event, and we thank all three bid cities for their interest and the quality of their submissions.'

WADA also received formal bids from Bangkok, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

'We want to measure the progress of the Sport Movement's implementation of the World Anti-Doping Code and Governments' implementation of the International Convention against Doping in Sport, and at the same time see what more can be done to combat doping in sports,' said POUND.

The decision to select Madrid was taken after two day's of meeting for the WADA Executive Committee and WADA Foundation Board in Montreal, Canada on 20-21 November.

The First World Conference, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in February 1999, conceived of the idea of an independent international agency to be responsible for coordinating and monitoring the fight against doping in sport and led to the birth of WADA in November 1999. At the Second World Conference, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2003, the final draft of the Code, the document harmonizing anti-doping rules in all sports and all regions of the world, was unanimously approved by representatives from governments and the sports movement.

Other News From Montreal

Brian MIKKELSEN, minister of sport for Denmark, was unanimously re-elected to the position of vice-chair to serve through the end of 2006 and the Foundation Board unanimously renewed the membership of WADA's Executive Committee for the 2006 calendar year.

With regard to Foundation Board membership changes, Korea will retire its seat and will be replaced by Jordan as the Asia representative. Finland will also join the Foundation Board as part of the troika system from European governments.

UNESCO Convention

Board members also received information about governments' progress toward ratification of the International Convention against Doping in Sport (Convention) that was unanimously adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO at its plenary session in Paris on 19 October 2005.

'On behalf of the Governments all over the world, I am very proud that we succeeded in adopting the Convention in October,' said MIKKELSEN. 'This is a great achievement taking into account that the process of formulating and adopting the convention has taken only two years.'

For a full account of the news from Montreal CLICK HERE.