MARTIN SAMUEL’S UNMISSABLE NEW TUESDAY COLUMN

THE World Athletics Championships ended, predictably, in an orgy of self-congratulation. Lord Coe, of the IAAF, was thanked by the BBC for laying on the greatest games ever, Coe returned the praise to the broadcaster for their wonderful coverage. Back in the studio all the talk was of how soon the event could return to London. We’re so fine, do-lang, do-lang, do-lang, as The Chiffons didn’t sing.

‘ That’s why athletics is the greatest sport in the world,’ cooed a commentator, surveying a podium containing one Russian athlete, running as a neutral because his country is so bent it is banned, and a gold medallist from Qatar, who has the unique distinction of being the first medal-winner from that country to be born there.

Like Qatar’s Bulgarian weightlifters, his predecessors were always imported, at a price.

That little peccadillo — the ruthless corruption of nationality in sport — did not stop Qatar getting the 2019 edition of the Championships, though.

And the issue of fixing and other questionable practices now being investigated in the United States, did not stop the 2021 event going to Nike central in Eugene, oregon, either. Capacity at Eugene’s Hayward Field venue is only slightly smaller than the ground at MK Dons.

So, there’s the reality. Not that athletics is coming home any time soon, but that it is a tainted pursuit that sells off its main event to the highest bidder, and the warmth felt for it at the London Stadium was a brief moment in time, no more.

‘There is growing confidence within the sport,’ insisted IAAF president Coe. ‘People are proud to be involved.’

Look, this is Britain. It does not take much to make us proud. The economy is starting to tank and we’re still banging on patriotically about hard Brexit. We win a few Smug: IAAF supremo Lord Coe medals in the relay and we’re kings of the world. Give us a big event and we’ll get behind it.

Last year, 81,781 turned up at Wembley to watch a football team that had just been beaten by Iceland play Malta.

We go to Test matches in big numbers, whether we’re any good at cricket or not. We fill huge stadiums for para athletics events. We were the worst performing host team in Rugby World Cup history, and you still can’t get a ticket at Twickenham for love nor money.

You’d want us in the front row at every gig you played but, let’s be honest, we’re not the most discerning crowd. We laugh at any joke, applaud any entrance. We’re up for it all, the best house a rotten turn could hope for.

So, Coe might not want to take London to the bank just yet. Normal service will be resumed in Doha in 2019, where attendances are typically low. Just 15,000 tickets were sold for the Para Athletics Championships there in 2015, compared to 230,000 in London this summer. The Asian Cup and Qatar open tennis were also sparsely attended.

Yet Doha and athletics are a lovely fit. That’s where the event should be held, really, so we can see it for what it is. Full of apologists and cheerleaders and in thrall to commerce. This is also why Nike — the company that endorses and embraces the drug cheat Justin Gatlin, booed in London don’t forget — gets its payback in 2021.

Eugene was the host award that bypassed a formal bidding process, a decision so suspect it is being investigated by the FBI. Before London, the IAAF took their marquee event to Russia and China. You can’t claim 2017 as a typical year for the sport.

It was Gatlin who talked of the narrative being about white hats and black hats — good guys and bad guys — but in athletics even the white hats are often grey around the edges.

At the time the 2021 host city was being debated, Lord Coe was on the IAAF Council and the payroll at Nike. He made plain his support for Eugene to a senior Nike executive, Craig Masback, a fact revealed by the BBC. Maybe those in front of camera don’t watch their own channel.

So, anyway, to answer the queries of the BBC panel: 2023. That’s the earliest the IAAF World Championships can return, by which time Laura Muir will be 30. But it won’t return then because the sport the BBC think they are covering, the one they called greatest in the world, does not exist.

It should, because there is nothing in essence purer than a foot race or a throwing contest, but athletics is undermined by drugs and corrupt executives and statesponsored doping and participants who sell their passports to the highest bidder, and there will be plenty of vested interests jostling to host in six years’ time and all are ready to pay. Azerbaijan, come on down.

So, for all the phoney euphoria, Qatar is welcome to it. Eugene, too. Anywhere but London. The love of the common people shouldn’t be turned into handy camouflage for the IAAF. Let Doha show athletics for what it is.