(ATR) UCI communications chief Sébastien Gillot is WADA’s new European director and takes charge of relations with the summer and winter IFs.
Gillot will start work in the Lausanne office on Aug. 13.
He replaces Benjamin Cohen, who will be leaving WADA in the coming weeks to become the first director general of the new International Testing Agency, the IOC's latest attempt to step up the fight against doping.
Gillot is a familiar face to many of the federations he will be dealing with in the run-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and beyond.
Head of communications at the UCI since 2014, he has held a number of communications/stakeholder engagement roles in the sports industry. Gillot was communications chief for the International Boxing Association (AIBA) for three years after a role managing comms for the Annecy 2018 Winter Olympic bid.
Prior to that, he was editor-in-chief at the Global Sports Forum Barcelona with Havas Sports & Entertainment and spent eight years as an editor of FIFA.com
Amid the ongoing fallout from the Russian doping scandal, WADA said Gillot "will reinforce WADA’s mission by ensuring that the agency’s objectives are successfully met; in particular, by leading the agency’s support to IFs, as well as other anti-doping organizations and stakeholders in Europe, in their development of effective anti-doping programs that are compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code".
Gillot is likely to come into frequent contact with the ITA and Cohen in the months ahead, as the testing agency becomes fully operational.
The ITA will provide doping controls and other services to international federations and major event organizations that wish to delegate their anti-doping programs to a body that operates independently from sports organizations and national interests.
The Global Association of International Sports Federations' doping-free sport unitwill remain intact and become the operational nucleus of the ITA, ensuring the staff expertise required to provide anti-doping services under its new, independent governance structure.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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