Jakarta, 5 May 2025
The Representatives of the KONI (National Sports Committee of Indonesia) Management has invited the IADO to hold a meeting to discuss the follow-up to doping control during the PON (National Sports Games) 2024 in Aceh and North Sumatra. The meeting took place on May 5th, 2035 at the KONI Central office. In the meeting, IADO delivered a complete presentation on the progress report on handling doping control at the PON. In general, IADO’s presentation began with an explanation of the timing of the doping collection which had begun on August 28th, 2024, although the opening of the PON was only held on September 9th, 2024, considering that on that date the artistic gymnastics competition had taken place at the Disporasu Multipurpose Building, Deli Serdang. Overall, IADO has deployed 15 Central DCOs in Aceh Province and 16 Central DCOs in North Sumatra Province. That did not include the Local DCOs and Local Chaperons who were also involved in taking 784 samples, all of which were sent directly to Bangkok.
Although PON has been going on for 7 months ago, it is very reasonable for KONI to ask for an explanation from IADO regarding the progress of its completion considering that KONI intends to conduct a final review of the medal tally of all Contingents, which according to plan will be held during the 2025 National Conference which will be held in the following months. In its explanation, IADO explained that basically IADO also wants the certainty of the decision on the doping problem to be resolved as soon as possible. The problem is that the series of processes is very long and must be fulfilled according to the provisions of the World Anti-Doping Code, namely: (1) the results of the analysis of the athlete’s urine from the Anti-Doping Laboratory in Bangkok were only known about 20 days after all the urine bottles are sent to Bangkok; (2) from the indicated data, then by IADO these were sent to the IADO RM (Result Management) Committee to be processed in order to make an Initial Notification letter addressed to the indicated athletes with a copy addressed to KONI, the relevant National Federations, and its International Federation; (3) as an obligation to respond to the Initial Notification letter from the IADO, athletes who are already indicated within a period of 14 days are asked for certainty regarding the opening of envelope B or the use of the right to a hearing; (4) after that the IADO (based on the RM Committee report) sent letters of demand to the athletes with a time limit of up to 21 days to ensure acceptance or appeal. Considering the number of athletes who are affected by doping is quite large compared to all previous PONs, the RM Committee has worked very carefully to avoid mistakes in decision making.
Learning from the previous case where an athlete from a certain sport had been sentenced for doping, but it turned out that he still competed in PON 2024, IADO explained that IADO checked the receipt of letters in double layers so that athletes would not argue by saying that he had never received a notification letter from IADO. For information, in the doping case at PON 2021, IADO had sanctioned 5 athletes (actually it should have been 6 athletes). However, in its development, 1 athlete’s sanction was delayed because at first he was easy to contact, but later it was difficult to contact him. Fortunately, the IADO (and LADI’s previous) file administration was quite neat, where the digital trail of WA communication between the athlete and the LADI Secretary General was still neatly stored and could be accounted for digitally forensically. Likewise with email communication. Even the notification of the sanction was also known by his National Federation. Therefore, IADO was very surprised when the athlete competed in PON 2024. For this reason, IADO’s post-PON 2024 correspondence system is very layered to ensure that the letters reach the intended athlete’s destination.