Safe Sport

Through its work on safe sport the IOC is taking steps to strengthen safeguarding across the Olympic Movement and to protect and promote the mental well-being of athletes.

The IOC’s mission is to place athletes at the heart of the Olympic Movement, and since 2004 the IOC has been committed to developing programmes and initiatives to ensure that every athlete can train and compete in a safe sporting environment – one that is fair, equitable and free from all forms of harassment and abuse.

These initiatives include the IOC Consensus Statement: harassment and abuse (nonaccidental violence) in sport (2016), the IOC Consensus Statement on Mental Health in Elite Athletes (2019) and the IOC Toolkit for IFs and NOCs related to creating and implementing policies and procedures to safeguard athletes from harassment and abuse in sport. In addition, the IOC Games-Time safeguarding framework has been implemented at each edition of the Olympic and Youth Olympic Games since 2016, and the development of safeguarding educational tools and initiatives is on-going. Olympic Agenda 2020+5 has set the strategic roadmap including Recommendation 5 which calls for the further strengthening of Safe Sport and the protection of athlete’s mental well-being.

 The IOC Safe Sport Unit, established in 2022, introduced a range of new programmes and initiatives at Youth Olympic Games and Olympic Games level, as well as broader initiatives beyond Games-time that cover education and awareness-raising, such as the IOC Safeguarding Toolkit for IFs and NOCs and the IOC Mental Health in Elite Athlete’s Toolkit, which help NOCs and IFs develop and implement policies and procedures in this field.

The IOC Safe Sport Unit has since gone on to launch a comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan, a collective roadmap for the implementation of the organisation’s evidence-based and research-driven efforts to promote mental well-being across its spheres of influence.