The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has revealed the ongoing comprehensive measures which place a huge focus on protecting sports integrity at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
Over the past few months, National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have conducted online seminars or organised physical sessions to inform team members about what competition manipulation entails and how it can be prevented.
A number of athlete ambassadors, selected in close collaboration with the International Sports Federations (IFs) and the NOCs, have been supporting these activities, with peer-to-peer communication having proved highly successful in the past.
Ambassador Danka Bartekova, IOC Ethics Commission Member, commented: “It is critical to protect the integrity of sport. Match-fixing and illegal betting completely ruin the passion of sport that all athletes have.
“We want to be clean, we want to play fair; and this is why we need to educate the athletes on this issue, so they are aware of how to protect their sport, and themselves.”
Furthermore, bet-monitoring will continue as a priority for the event across all sports, checked by the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions (OM Unit PMC), via its platform IBIS and with its partners.
Such partners include Sportradar, the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), the Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS), the Council of Europe’s network of national platforms (Group of Copenhagen), major betting regulatory authorities and further private global sports betting companies. It has been assured that monitoring will be carried out 24/7 and remotely at Olympic House in Switzerland.
In particular, it has been detailed that the partnership with the GLMS will see the organisation cooperate with the IOC on information sharing and education activities, with the duo having already cooperated on ‘various editions’ of the Olympic Games as well as teaching programmes.
Friedrich Martens, Head of the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions at the IOC, said: “Beyond their traditional financial support to the Olympic movement, we are glad that Lotteries have been also strongly supporting us in our efforts to keep sport and, notably our pinnacle event, the Olympic Games, free from manipulations. We are glad to sign this agreement with GLMS which will allow us to further strengthen our cooperation.”
Additionally, the OM Unit PMC has also been conducting risk assessments on the seven winter sports and 15 disciplines on the Beijing 2022 programme in further relation to potential competition manipulation linked to sports betting.
It has been shared that the organisation will ‘retain a direct link’ with all the IFs concerned in order to flag any breach of the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions (OM Code PMC), whilst it is also prepared to carry out a preliminary investigation and assist with setting up a Disciplinary Commission.Finally, in terms of raising awareness for all of the above, the IOC’s has continued its ‘Make The Right Decision’ campaign which looks to provide educational material, such as a self-explanatory Code of Conduct, an elearning course, and an educational toolbox.
