About Us

Mission

"To provide a sporting environment free of banned doping methods for New Zealand sport and athletes".

History of Drug Free Sport NZ

The origin of the Agency can be traced back to 1988 at the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association (now the New Zealand Olympic Committee). The infamous positive test on the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson occurred in that year at the Seoul Olympics. This gave great profile to the issue of drugs in sport and reinforced the expectation that the next major Games, the Commonwealth Games to be held in Auckland in 1990, should be clean.

The NZOCGA responded to this by instituting a testing programme for all athletes who were in contention for selection to the New Zealand team at those Games. The Hillary Commission (now Sport and Recreation New Zealand - SPARC) contributed to the cost of that programme and the overseeing committee was convened by Ian Boyd.

After the Games, the Hillary Commission boosted their funding and contracted the NZOCGA to run a programme which would cover a wider range of predominantly Olympic sports although some non-Olympic sports, such as Rugby Union, also chose to join the programme.

At the same time the Commission established a Task Force to examine the issue and recommend what steps needed to be taken to address the problem. That Task Force reported back in February 1991 with two primary recommendations:

1. That a National Policy on the Misuse of Drugs in Sport be adopted by government.
2. That a New Zealand Sports Drug Authority be established by Statute.

The first step towards this was the establishment of the Drug Free Sport NZ (initially as a stand alone committee of the Hillary Commission) in Auckland under a Board chaired by High Court Judge, Sir Graham Speight (who retired as Chair at the end of 2000).

In January 1995 the Legislation came into force establishing the Agency as a Crown Entity and providing for a Board which is appointed by the Minister and answerable to him.

In 1994 the NZ Government signed the International Anti-doping Arrangement an agreement between five (now nine countries, Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland) countries to co-operate in anti-doping matters to improve each countries anti-doping programme. This arrangement has been the single biggest contributor to New Zealand's ability to operate a programme which applies worlds best practise to its operations.