‘ We are not a sport full of junkies’
Jones runs his rule over Aussie Rules
LORD COE says athletics will not regain the trust of the public until they start believing it is “not a sport full of junkies”.
IAAF president Coe is under growing pressure in the wake of the corruption allegations aimed at the past regime of the international governing body. They have come to light amid revelations of systematic doping that have seen the suspension of Russia.
It is the biggest crisis in athletics history and Coe said: “We can make the changes but the journey is going to be ultimately when people, and particularly the clean athletes, feel they have got structures and they have got anti- doping systems that they can trust in, that parents in large part nudge their kids towards certain sports.
“They have got to feel we are not a sport full of junkies.”
With the Olympics in Rio less than six months away, track and fi eld is facing the spotlight for all the wrong reasons but Coe, the double Olympic 1500m champion. believes trust can be restored.
“Yes we can,” he says in an interview being shown tonight on The Clare Balding show on BT Sport 1. “And the changes that I am making at the moment and alongside my Council and some really good people, will do that but the journey back to trust is a much less certain one.
“It’s not like sitting here with a vending machine in front of you, put £ 5 in and it’ll all come out. It’s not going to work like that.”
Coe replaced Lamine Diack last year and the former IAAF president is facing a bribery investigation over claims he knew about the Russian drugs scandal.
But Coe insists the revelations are not new – and that he wished he had done things earlier. “The answer to that in life is normally yes and I think you have to be very open and very honest about that,” he said.
“Was the fact that we had problems in Russia around anti- doping a huge secret? No, I’ve been a junior athlete from the age of 18, I got into the team in 1975- 76 and that’s always been a problem, it’s a deep- seated and endemic problem. Were we, when we were asked the questions about the rising number of Russian positives, given the right answers? Probably no.
“Should we have been able to look over the wall and fi nd out a great deal more? Yes and those are the changes that I am now putting in place.
“I joined an athletics club when I was 11, my fi rst coach used to drive the cross- country team around South Yorkshire in a camper van and we used to compete in mining villages and when he died I spent some time with his wife.
“She said to me the only day of the year he was not training and coaching – and it was not actually the only day of the year, it was the only night of the year – was Christmas night.
“For me this is quite simple: we have got to get back to a sport that produced people with that ethos. When you look at the horror show that has unfolded, the question we all have to ask ourselves – and I’m not immune from that – I ask myself every day, how on earth did we get to this position?”
The Clare Balding Show is tonight at 10.30pm on BT Sport 1. EDDIE JONES wants his England side to adopt an antipodean model in the next round of the Six Nations – but not one from rugby.
The head coach is urging his squad to take on the catching skills of Australian Rules footballers to combat the kickand- chase game of Ireland at Twickenham a week on Saturday.
Last season the then- head coach Stuart Lancaster knew exactly what was coming when England travelled to Dublin but they were undone 19- 9 after failing to deal with the high balls launched by Conor Murray, Johnny Sexton and Ian Madigan. They can expect more of the same from Joe Schmidt’s side as they bid to make it three wins out of three for the new coach.
Jones, left, said: “We have got to win the Aussie Rules contest – that is the fi rst thing we have got to do.
“They kick 60 per cent of their possession so we have got to win that battle.”