Dr. Natalio Wheatley, British Virgin Islands (BVI) Sports Minister, is committed to helping the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organization (RADO) become the “best” in the world.
He was speaking during an official visit to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth Affairs, Fisheries, Agriculture and Sports by representatives of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Caribbean RADO and the BVI Olympic Committee (BVIOC) on Friday (May 31st).
Dr. Wheatley openly expressed his desire to contributing to the anti-doping movement in the BVI.
“I want to know – working together with Ephraim Penn and the BVIOC – how we can improve in the region, and make the Caribbean RADO the best RADO in the world. I am willing to do whatever I can as Minister of Sport. Coming from a small place, we want to be recognised for our commitment to fair play and hard work. It gives us a great feeling of pride and joy to be able to compete with athletes from around the world, and be able to do so fairly, and even in some cases beat them.”
Caribbean RADO Executive Director Sasha Sutherland further encouraged the government to continue its support for the BVIOC.
“Country compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code underpins clean sport for athletes. If a country is non-compliant, its athletes can’t compete at the Olympic level, Pan Am level, Carifta, CAC, Commonwealth. Code compliance by signatories is one of the areas where our region needs to strengthen its work. We are encouraging the Ministry to join arms with the NOC [National Olympic Committee] to ensure that BVI maintains compliance before the [UNESCO] Conference of Parties in November which takes place in Paris.”
