After their current cooperation with the USADA comes to an end on December 31, the UFC has announced that they will begin working with a new anti-doping agency beginning in January 2024.
Recently, the chief business officer and senior executive vice president of the promotion, Hunter Campbell, and the senior vice president of athlete health and performance, Jeff Novitsky, made the announcement that they would continue working with Drug Free Sport International (DFSI) on their anti-doping program.
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The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) issued a blistering statement earlier this week, accusing the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) of asking the agency to exclude Conor McGregor from the statutory drug testing period of six months. Because of this, tensions flared up between the two sides, which ultimately resulted in their being unable to reconcile their differences.
During a recent press conference, Hunter Campbell addressed the current break between the UFC and USADA. He revealed that the company will be partnering with DFSI beginning in the next year and stated:
“Jeff and I were talking about horse racing, which was all but encouraged forcefully by Congress to get a deal done with USADA but wasn’t able to do so in the last 18 months. We were talking about how the horse racing industry has been criticized for its use of performance-enhancing drugs. They decided to work with an organization known as Drug Free Sport, which is the same kind of business that we are going to switch over to.
See Campbell’s remarks in the following video (4:06):
With more than 24 years of experience in the field of anti-doping solutions for sporting organizations, the Doping Free Sport International (DFSI) is widely regarded as one of the most effective anti-doping agencies in the world. The DFSI, which has its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, is currently providing its services to a number of significant athletic organizations, including the FIFA, MLB, NFL, NBA, and NCAA collegiate sports.
In other news, it was recently disclosed that George Piro, a former special agent with the FBI, will take on the role of independent administrator of the anti-doping program for the UFC in the upcoming year.
Jeff Novitsky shares details about UFC’s updated anti-doping program following split with USADA
Jeff Novitsky, senior vice president of athlete health and performance for the UFC, has lately divulged some information regarding the newly implemented anti-doping policy for the promotion. In addition to this, he provided an overview of some significant adjustments that will be made following the incorporation of Drug Free Sport International.
During the same press conference, Novitsky made the announcement that the DFSI will begin handling sample collection for all athletes beginning in January 2024. He also made the guarantee that the revised program would be significantly more effective than the one that USADA had in place at the time.
In the updated anti-doping program, some of the major changes that will be implemented include increasing the amount of blood testing, conducting oral fluid testing, performing tests for growth hormone-releasing factors on every sample, conducting dry blood spot testing, and increasing the amount of isotope ratio mass spectrometry testing to deter testosterone abuse. These changes are intended to prevent athletes from abusing performance-enhancing drugs like testosterone.
In addition to that, Jeff Novitsky stressed the significance of conducting research on the use of stimulants in contexts other than competition, developing an improved biological passport system, and enhancing the quality of the long-term sample storage method.
