A conference of the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) in October highlighted how external threats are endangering the integrity of sport, from match fixing and betting to terrorism and cyber-crime. The sport security industry is expanding rapidly as mechanisms to mitigate such threats are demanded both by nations and cities that host major sporting events and by the bodies that award them, such as the IOC and FIFA.

But all the security systems in the world will not save sport if its core asset – the athlete – is undermined and attacked by violence and abuse. Non-accidental violence to athletes (as opposed to accidental sports injuries) represents 'the enemy within' modern sport: it includes sexual harassment and abuse, physical punishments, emotional humiliation and deliberate pressures to compete or train while injured, to observe weight regimes that endanger health, or to use addictive or harmful substances in pursuit of performance enhancement. Research has revealed that all these practices compromise not only the health and welfare of the athlete but also the values upon which sport was originally founded.

Why would someone wish to harm athletes and damage their performance prospects? Surely this is counterproductive to the shared aim of coaches, fans and athletes to win gold? Perhaps surprisingly, research across the globe has found that the higher an athlete progresses up the sporting talent ladder, the greater is the risk that they will suffer violence or abuse. Such is the intensity of pressure to win in modern international sport, and so great is the power of coaches and other authority figures, that athletes have too-often become compliant or coerced into unsafe practices that harm them, their co-athletes and the sport overall.

In recognition of this, and building on over 15 years of successful prevention work in sport by the NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit, Brunel University London – the world's leader in sport abuse and prevention research over many years - has joined with other academics and policy-makers from around the globe to establish a new NGO, Safe Sport International.

Abuse of any kind has no place in sport, but for too long it has gone unchecked and unpunished. Research carried out over the past 20 years has shown us just how prevalent the problem is and that's why we believe it is time to set international standards, to understand what is acceptable and what isn't.

Safe Sport International is intended to shed light on non-accidental harms to athletes caused by violence and abuse through a continuing programme of research and to quality assure safe practices in sport. In the same way that the World Anti-Doping Agency draws upon a pharmacological evidence base to monitor doping control programmes worldwide, SSI will use research findings to inform capacity building with sport organisations and to develop risk mitigation tools for safe sport. Eventually, SSI hopes that the major event awarding bodies will mandate a set of international safe sport standards as a prerequisite for hosting any major sporting competition.

Celia Brackenridge OBE is Professor Emerita, Brunel University London and Co-chair, Safe Sport International: info@safesportintl.org.uk