Scientists stand by doping claims
THE scientists whose analysis of leaked antidoping data from the IAAF database has thrown athletics into crisis, defended their findings yesterday after the world body rubbished their claims.
THE two men bidding to lead world athletics into a new era, Olympic gold medallists Sebastian Coe of England and Sergey Bubka of Ukraine, offered contrasting reactions yesterday to the latest doping storm to engulf the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
While Coe went on the attack, his rival offered a more conciliatory tone.
Coe and fellow Olympic champion Bubka are going head to head in the election this month to lead track and field’s world governing body when incumbent Lamine Diack of Senegal steps down.
A damning report in British newspaper The Sunday Times and by German broadcaster ARD/WDR at the weekend accused the IAAF of failing to investigate hundreds of “suspicious” drug tests between 2001 and 2012.
It raised new questions about the sport just weeks before the start of the World Track and Field championships in the Chinese capital, Beijing, from August 22 to August 30.
The IAAF hit back in a strongly worded statement on Tuesday and vicepresident Coe, who said the claims were “a declaration of war” on athletics, offered an impassioned defence of the sport he graced as twice Olympic 1,500m champion.
“I don’t think anyone should underestimate the anger which is felt in our sport in the betrayal of the last few days of our sport,” Coe, who won gold at the 1980 and 1984 Games, told the BBC yesterday. “That in some way we sit on our hands, at best, and at worst are complicit in a cover-up, that is just not borne out by anything we have done as a sport in the past 15 years.
“We have led the way on out-ofcompetition independent testing, we have led the way on laboratories.
“We were the first sport to have arbitration panels, we introduced blood passports in 2009 because we wanted to elevate the science around weeding out the cheats.”
Fellow IAAF vice-president Bubka, the 1988 Olympic pole-vault champion, said the sport should be more transparent. “Athletics is the most fundamental of all sports and the way the world sees athletics influences the way it views all sports,” he said.
“We cannot fail because the world would lose faith not only in athletics but in other sports and that would be a catastrophe for young people worldwide. We must be more proactive and even more transparent in our aggressive pursuit of a zero tolerance policy against doping cheats.”
The two news organisations making the claims said they had obtained “secret” test data from the vaults of the IAAF, which was supplied by a whistleblower disgusted by the extent of doping in track and field.
The reports said 800 of the 12,000 blood tests involving 5,000 athletes were suspicious, indicating suspected widespread blood doping in athletics between 2001 and 2012. Coe disputes the findings. “What has angered me — and has angered our sport — is the betrayal; (the contention) that we are doing absolutely nothing when we have led the way on this issue, and have consistently done so,” he said.
“Every athlete at the world championships in 2011 and 2013 was subject to blood tests, that’s unprecedented. We spend $2m a year (on antidoping) and we are not a rich sport. We have 10 fulltime professionals.”
Coe pointed to the fact that the governing body had a strong track record in rooting out cheats.
“We have got some of the highestprofile names out of the sport in the past couple of years,” he said.
“This has caused us intense embarrassment but we have always taken the view that we would rather have shortterm embarrassment and protect the clean athletes.”
He poured scorn on the idea the IAAF had not shared blood-test data with the World Anti-Doping Agency. “The assumption we are not sharing this information is wholly false.”