When a sample collection goes wrong, the first question is not what went wrong. It is who was acting, and under whose obligation. The Code answers it with two defined terms that look interchangeable in a news report and are not interchangeable anywhere else.
Signatories
A Signatory is an entity that has accepted the Code and is bound by it. The list is structural rather than open-ended:
- the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee;
- National Olympic Committees and National Paralympic Committees;
- International Federations;
- National Anti-Doping Organisations;
- Major Event Organisations.
Only a Signatory can be assessed for compliance, placed on a watchlist, or declared non-compliant under the procedure described in Non-compliance is not a sanction.
Delegated Third Parties
A Delegated Third Party is any person or body to which a Signatory has delegated part of its anti-doping activity — sample collection, results management, laboratory logistics, testing planning. The DTP is bound by its contract with the Signatory, and through that contract by the relevant International Standards. It is not a party to the Code.
Why the distinction has money behind it
Three consequences follow, and each one is a line in a budget or a pleading:
- Compliance exposure. A failure by a contractor is the Signatory's compliance problem. Outsourcing the activity does not outsource the obligation.
- Procedural challenges. An athlete contesting a collection procedure contests the Signatory's conduct, not the contractor's, and the Signatory defends the case.
- Contractual recourse. Whatever the Signatory recovers from the contractor is a private contract matter, decided outside the anti-doping system entirely.
The common misreading
Press coverage often describes a testing agency as «WADA's agency» or a collection company as «the anti-doping authority». Neither is right: WADA writes the Code and monitors compliance with it, the Signatory carries the obligation, and the contractor performs tasks under a contract. The chain matters most in the cases where timing decides the outcome — a whereabouts case under article 2.4, or the effective date of a provisional suspension under article 10.13.2.
Where this is written: the definitions in Appendix 1 to the World Anti-Doping Code and the International Standards, wada-ama.org/en/resources.