Nicole Sapstead from UK Anti-Doping

The Women in Sport & Exercise Academic Network Podcast

Nicole Sapstead, Chief Executive of UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), talks about her career as a woman, her challenges, her role models and her advice for other women pursuing a career in sport and exercise. She also talks about some of the emerging and current issues among females in terms of doping in sport. We have delighted to have Nicole speaking at our WISEAN conference this year on 11th/12th June 2019 at St Mary's University, Twickenham.

Nicole Sapstead was appointed as interim Chief Executive of UKAD in January 2015 and was appointed to the position permanently in March 2015.

Previously UK Anti-doping’s Director of Operations, Nicole was responsible for the delivery of the organisation’s testing, intelligence and investigations, and science and medicine functions.

Nicole has worked in anti-doping since 1997, having previously worked as the Assistant to the Director and Legal Advisor at the Drug Control Centre at King’s College, and in various roles at UK Sport, where she progressed to Head of Operations before joining UK Anti-Doping on its formation in 2009.

Here are some useful links that set out UKAD's direction of travel for the next few years.

About UKAD

UKAD’s Strategic Plan

What UKAD does

Much of UKAD's activity currently relates to delivering against the Tailored Review Recommendations.

UK Anti-Doping prepares to meet ambitious objectives following government funding boost

UK Anti-Doping receives £6 million funding boost

& TR here

This means that their focus is very much on testing across a wide range of sports and at varying levels within these sports, educating those within sport, from the very young, right through to the elite end and all those in between as well as the ‘entourage’ that impact/surround an athlete at the varying stages of their athlete pathway.

In terms of athlete pathway education, UKAD publish news articles ad hoc (see below), but the Athletes Hub is content tailored for athletes.

More than 1,000 young athletes to receive UK Anti-Doping education at 2018 School Games

UKAD are starting to look at the wider integrity piece – not just as it relates to anti-doping and where they can be more joined up with those other stakeholders who are also are involved with differing aspects of integrity – they are also entering into a wider remit where they feel they have a part to play with educating the wider population and those that use gyms about supplements and the increasing societal trend of steroid use.