Weak dollar to hurt anti-doping research?

The World Anti-doping Agency expressed concern that its research and out-of-competition testing budgets may be impacted by the weakness of the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. At a time when the organisation is vowing to strengthen the global fight against doping, the agency's $23.7 million budget is falling victim to economics.

The Montreal-based agency gets its funding from a variety of sources, including the International Olympic Committee and governmental organisations, but its funds all come in U.S. dollars, which hit a record low last week.

WADA plans to put $6.5 million towards 'cutting edge' anti-doping research, including developing new testing methods. The agency may cut costs by ending out-of-competition testing, leaving those duties to the sports federations such as the UCI instead. "We are a monitoring agency," Pound said at the WADA conference in Madrid. "We've made some efforts to get out of that [testing] responsibility."

The WADA budget is due to be reviewed on the final day of the conference by the Executive Committee on November 17.