‘Findings of large-scale doping suppressed by IAAF’

LONDON: World athletics’ governing body IAAF has suppressed a 2011 survey that reveals up to one-third of the world’s top competitors admitted using banned performanceenhancing techniques, the UK’s Sunday Times reported.

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, who conducted confidential interviews with athletes at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, the newspaper said.

The results of the study showed that 29 to 34 percent of the 1 800 competitors at the championships had violated anti-doping rules in the previous 12 months.

“These findings demonstrate that doping is remarkably widespread among elite athletes, and remains largely unchecked despite current biological testing programmes,” the study said.

A month after collecting the information and analysing it, they were told to sign a confidentiality agreement, and have now criticised the IAAF for preventing its publication.

“The IAAF’s delaying publication for so long without good reason is a serious encroachment on the freedom of publication,” the researchers said.

Their statement added that the IAAF had not commissioned the survey, but had used its influence to suppress the findings, which have been leaked to the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR.

The study was financed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), which told the newspaper on Friday it had given the IAAF power to veto publication in return for allowing access to the athletes at Daegu. Lead author Rolf Ulrich said he and his fellow experts had been barred from even discussing their work.

“The IAAF is blocking it,” Ulrich told the newspaper. I think they are stakeholders with Wada and they just blocked the whole thing.”

Some of the study’s headline figures were leaked in the US in 2013, but the IAAF continued to prevent full publication, the newspaper said.

After collecting the information, researchers were told to sign a confidentiality agreement