The Bahamas Anti-Doping Commission (BADC) received high praise from the minister of youth, sports and culture at the opening of its Dope Control Training Seminar last weekend.
Minister Charles Maynard was effusive in his compliments, pointing out that despite a number of challenges, the commission rose to the occasion and did a lot of work in a relatively short time.
"I have to compliment you Dr. (Jerome) Lightbourne, the chairman, you and other members of the commission. A really good job has been done," said Minister Maynard.
He expressed satisfaction that the commission is fully structured with key components, the Disciplinary, the Appeals and Therapeutic panels in place. The minister was equally impressed with the solid turnout of professional persons in the medical field who registered as trainees with the desire to be certified as doping control officers (DCOs).
Also, in further demonstrating full confidence in the commission, Minister Maynard predicted that such a good job will be done in monitoring the scene, that the Disciplinary and Appeals bodies would not have any matters to deal with.
The BADC's Dope Control Training Seminar was staged at Superclubs Breezes January 19-21 over three days. A total of 28 trainees took part in the sessions that were conducted by representatives of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Theresa Reynolds, the USADA's resources manager and her assistant, Laura Hahn, were exceptional in advancing knowledge to the trainees during the seminar.
They both were satisfied with the level of understanding demonstrated by the trainees and came to the conclusion that the trainees will do positive work for the BADC as it moves forward with the 'Clean Sports' theme.
Present for the seminar and providing some insight to Reynolds and Hahn in how the dope control process worked here in the past were Nurse Beatrice Arthur, Dr. Ricardo Davis and Dr. Julian Stewart. They were the lone DCOs in the country before the certification of the trainees. Nurse Arthur has been appointed chief doping control officer.
BADC Chairman Lightbourne who welcomed participants and guests at the opening ceremony on the first evening, termed the seminar successful.
"I am satisfied that the seminar was quite successful. The amount of trainees who came out and the fact that we had representation from New Providence, Grand Bahama, Abaco and Andros, is proof that we've got a good bit of interested partners to work with as we push our program," said Dr. Lightbourne.

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