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Adidas ends association with NADA

October 25, 2016

The sports manufacturing giant, the only domestic business to sponsor NADA, will not be renewing its 300,000 euro contract with Germany's anti-doping agency. Adidas say they are committed to fighting against doping.

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Nada Anti Doping Agentur Deutschland
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Kohring

NADA's managing director Lars Mortsiefer said the agency is "very sorry” to lose one of its main partners. The contract with Adidas - reportedly worth in excess of 300,000 euros (325,000 dollars) - runs until the end of 2016. No reason was given as to why the contract is not being extended.

"We would like to remain in connection to NADA, and we're currently in talks over others forms of cooperation,” Adidas spokesperson Oliver Brüggen said Tuesday.

Brüggen also added that the German sporting giant is still committed to the fight against performance-enhancing drugs, saying the company will terminate the contract of any athlete that has been proven guilty of doping. Previously, sprinter Tyson Gay and cyclist Jan Ulrich have been affected by this stance after being caught using banned substances.

Mortsiefer told German newspaper Bild that the financial loss wouldn't impact the organization's testing regime but said: "We are very sorry that we will lose one of our main partners in all probability."

German politician Dagmar Freitag, chairman of the Bundestag's sports committee, said that while the financing of NADA is a matter of the states, NADA's foundation model "can now be safely dismissed as a failure.”

(AP/dpa)