Statement Paula Newby-Fraser


In 2002 I participated in IM Germany Frankfurt, and at the pro race meeting prior to the event the race director gave the rules for the special needs(drinks/foods for athlets outside of normal aidstations):

1) An athlete could drop his/her run special needs bottles off the morning of the race to a volunteer who would place the bottles on a table.  The bottles "would not" be monitored once the volunteer placed the bottles on the special needs table, thus leaving them accessible to any member of the public.

2)  An athlete could also have personal support place the special needs bottles at a table at any time during the race, giving unauthorised personel unlimited access to not only their athletes bottles but to anyone else's. The bottles would not be monitored once thesupport dropped the bottle off at the special needs table.

3)  An athlete could have personal support people on the bike course at a specific location hand off bottles as needed.  In this case the bottles would be protected, by an individually trusted person.

I had traveled to the race from the United States, so option #3 was not available to me and I felt it did give an unfair advantage to local athletes.  Since I didn't have the luxury of trusted outside aid over the entire course I felt I could not ensure the integrity of my bottles.
Specifically, the bottles had to identified with YOUR race number(standard practice in labeling) and were placed on a special needs table with no supervision the entire race (non-standard I was so disturbed by this oversight that I told race personnel prior to the start that they could not expect an athlete to participate in any post race drug testing since bottles were not supervised by race support, and the procedure was contrary to the ‘unathorized assistance’ rule enforced in the US. I discussed this point with several other race officials and very publicly, at the pre-race meeting voiced my opinion that this was an unsafe, unprofessional and potentially flawed race procedure that does not go on at other world class triathlons or marathons around the world.

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