You are not tested. You are still liable.

Almost every anti-doping conversation in a gym is about the athlete's risk.

The Code applies to the person holding the pads as well, through a different route and with sanctions that reach the same length. Most coaches have never read that part and would be surprised by how little it takes.

What does not apply to you

Start with the narrow exemption, because coaches routinely mistake it for a wide one.

You will not be asked for a sample. You cannot be charged with Use of a prohibited substance, because that article attaches to athletes providing samples.

That is the whole of it.

And what does

Sanctions for complicity run from a minimum of 2 years to a lifetime ban, depending on seriousness. Retaliation carries the same range.

A lifetime ban on a coach is a career, and it does not require having administered anything.

The word that should worry you is covering up

Article 2.9 lists covering up as complicity, and the official commentary states that complicity may include physical or psychological assistance.

Read that against how these situations actually arise.

• A coach who suspects what an athlete is doing and says nothing.
• A coach who is told and decides it is not his business.
• A coach who knows something happened and helps the story hold together afterwards.

None of that involves buying anything or administering anything, and all of it sits inside the article as written.

Encouraging sits there too. A coach who suggests, hints, or applies pressure toward a result he knows is not achievable cleanly has done something the Code names, whether or not anything was ever purchased.

And there is a duty to report

This is the part that turns silence from a passive failing into a positive breach.

A coach who becomes aware of a violation is expected to notify his national anti-doping organisation. Staying quiet is not neutral: it is the conduct Article 2.9 describes.

Which means the instinct that protects a gym, keeping it internal and handling it quietly, is the instinct that creates the exposure.

Prohibited Association, which catches innocent people

This is the article most likely to catch a coach who has done nothing wrong in his own mind.

Athletes and support personnel are both prohibited from working, in a professional or sport-related capacity, with an athlete support person who is serving a doping sanction.

The disqualifying status runs for the duration of that person's sanction. Where no specific period was set, 6 years from the decision applies as the outer limit.

So a physiotherapist serving a 2-year ban is disqualifying for those 2 years. What matters is checking, not assuming.

Practically for a head coach: bringing somebody into your building, referring an athlete to a practitioner, or letting a sanctioned person work in a coaching role can each be the thing.

And the procedural detail that decides cases

For a prohibited association violation to be established, the person must have known the disqualifying status.

In practice that usually means having been advised in writing by the relevant anti-doping organisation or by WADA.

Which cuts both ways. It protects a coach who genuinely did not know, and once you have been told, the protection is gone and continuing is a decision.

There is also a published list. WADA maintains a global Prohibited Association list of support personnel currently suspended from working with athletes, and national bodies publish their own.

A head coach who has never looked at it, before hiring anybody, has skipped a 5-minute check that exists precisely for this.

The part that applies hardest in a youth programme

The Code increases sanctions for athlete support personnel who encourage a Protected Person to engage in conduct that violates it.

Protected Person is broader than most coaches assume. It covers athletes under 16, athletes under 18 who are not in a registered testing pool and have not competed in an international event in an open category, and individuals lacking legal capacity under applicable national legislation.

Which means most of a junior programme is inside that definition, and the same act carries more weight there.

The asymmetry is deliberate. The Code treats a young athlete as less culpable and the adult directing him as more so.

And in some countries it is criminal

The Code is a sporting instrument. It is not the only one.

Several jurisdictions have criminalised aspects of doping conduct by support personnel. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act in the United States created criminal liability with custodial sentences for conspiracy to influence international competition through doping, and it has extraterritorial reach. Various European countries have their own criminal provisions covering supply and facilitation.

Which means a coach can face a sporting sanction and a criminal process arising from the same conduct, in a jurisdiction he may not live in.

That is beyond the scope of this page and beyond mine. It belongs here because coaches routinely assume the worst outcome is a ban.

What this looks like in an ordinary gym

None of the above requires a criminal operation. The realistic scenarios are duller.

• Handing an athlete a supplement you bought and did not check, which then produces a positive test. Closer to Administration than most coaches assume, and whether you knew what was in it is exactly the question that will be asked.
• Recommending a clinic, doctor or practitioner without knowing their status.
• Continuing to work with a colleague after a ban, because you have known him 20 years and consider the whole thing unjust.
• Telling an athlete not to report something, or discouraging a training partner from speaking to anybody, because it would damage the gym. That is Article 2.11.
• Being told an athlete is using something and choosing not to know more.

What a coach should actually do

Five things, none of which take long.

Check the association lists before hiring, referring or partnering with anybody. WADA and your national body both publish them.

Do not hand athletes supplements. If a product enters the gym it enters with a batch-tested certification and a written record of what it is and where it came from, and the athlete makes the decision. The material on certification covers what each mark actually proves.

Write down what you know. A staff that records what supplements are in use, who advised what, and when, has a defence that a staff relying on memory does not.

Report rather than contain. If somebody raises a concern, route it to the national anti-doping organisation. The instinct to keep it in the gym is the one that creates liability.

Take the education. Most national anti-doping organisations run free courses for support personnel, and completing one demonstrates the staff took its obligations seriously, which matters when degree of fault is assessed.

Why this sits on a nutrition site

Because supplements are where coaches actually get caught, and a supplement is a nutrition decision made in a gym by somebody who is usually not a nutritionist.

The contamination material on this site is written for the athlete. The version for a coach is shorter: you should not be the person choosing, buying or handing over a supplement, and if you are, the exposure is partly yours.

A staff that has decided this in advance, written it down, and applied it to everybody, has removed the most common route by which a coach ends up in a hearing about something he did not intend.