This is a project that is co-funded by the European Union in which we’ve created a mobile application designed to reduce the prevalence of doping among young athletes in grassroots sports. It involves a collaboration of organisations from 7 countries with expertise in doping, coach education, pedagogy, psychology, policy, and behaviour change.

“I’m a grassroots coach, so doping is not a problem for me” …WRONG!
According to the 2007 White Paper on Sport, the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport represents a threat to European sport. Doping undermines the key principles of sport: open and fair competition, and also poses a threat to an athlete’s physical and mental health.

Although doping may be viewed as something that occurs exclusively within the realms of elite sport, a recent report containing students from 36 European countries, revealed that some athletes within grassroots sport also take performance enhancing drugs. This may be due to a lack of awareness of what constitutes banned substances, a lack of testing within grassroots sport, and athletes at this level having little comprehension of the dangers that banned substances pose to one’s health reproductive systems.

You may be confronted by situations, such as that in the picture to the right, or hear rumours that athletes you coach might be doping. We designed the ADVICE app to prepare you for situations that you might encounter and provide you with knowledge to answer questions you may receive from athletes.

Coaches can be responsible for whether athletes decide to dope or not. As such, the ADVICE project responds to the need for:

• Coach education in relation to doping
• Strategies to help coaches reduce doping among young athletes
• Strategies to help coaches build optimal coaching environments
• Strategies for coaches to build effective relationships with their athletes