Olympic champions suspected of doping

Dozens of gold medallists with ‘abnormal’ test results Hundreds under suspicion yet no one stripped of a title So can we trust anything we see in Beijing this month?

ATHLETICS was pitched into crisis yesterday when leaked blood test results alleged that 800 athletes — including a dozen British competitors — had produced ‘abnormal’ samples between 2001 and 2012. It is claimed athletes with suspicious blood samples won 146 medals, including 55 golds, in long-distance events in Olympics and World Championships over the 11-year period.

The Sunday Times and German TV broadcaster ARD/WDR said they obtained the figures from a whistleblower related to the IAAF, the sport’s governing body. UK Athletics said last night: ‘We would encourage information to be shared with anti-doping authorities so it can be investigated by the appropriate independent bodies.’

WHETHER seeing is believing is one of sport’s most critical questions, and one that takes a yet more sordid complexion as a result of the terrifying revelations of the last 24 hours.

It is one that will haunt us as we watch — if we can bring ourselves to do so — the World Athletics Championships in Beijing, starting on August 22.

For The Sunday Times has revealed that a third of medals awarded in world and Olympic long-distance athletics between 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes who registered suspicious blood tests. That means 144 medals, including 55 golds, are dubious, yet it is claimed that no one has been stripped of their title.

The results of 12,000 blood tests on 5,000 athletes, revealed by a whistleblower connected to the sport’s governing body the IAAF, showed that tests on 800 athletes were ‘highly suggestive of doping, at the very least abnormal’. (Other reasons, such as pregnancy, can cause such abnormalities). A dozen Brits, one of whom is a famous name, recorded suspicious results.

It is also suggested that several clean Brits have missed out on medals — or the right colour of medal — to athletes who appeared to have been doping. Clearly this was the case when Jessica Ennis (now Ennis- Hill) lost to Tatyana Chernova in the World Championships of 2011. Chernova has since been banned for using a drug that replicated high-altitude conditions.

Russia — Chernova’s country — was shown as the worst offender: 80 per cent of its athletes won medals that were dubious. The country was called ‘the blood testing epicentre of the world’. It was also said that Kenya, a hotbed of distance running, won 18 medals doubtfully. In all, 10 medals at the London Olympics were claimed by athletes with extraordinary blood samples. However, neither Mo Farah nor Usain Bolt — about whom there have been questions asked — was found to have produced a single alarming result.

The Rio Olympics are only a year away. Yet the governors of sport yesterday did their best to put their fingers in their ears and close their eyes to this disgrace.

Lord Coe, who is in a difficult position only a few weeks away from the election for president of the IAAF (a cleft stick we shall return to), issued only a two-line comment via Twitter. ‘In response to today’s media reports, I know that the IAAF takes these allegations extremely seriously and it will issue a robust and detailed response to them and continue to work closely, as it has always done, with WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency),’ he said.

Now, Coe is standing on an unremittingly anti-drugs ticket, but his comments are nonsensical. If, as we must believe and nobody has denied, the blood findings were in the possession of the IAAF, how can it be said they take the matter seriously? They have brushed the matter under their Monaco Axminster for years.

The cleft stick? Coe cannot scare the horses — the worldwide electorate — before the vote. Many areas of the world are not as concerned about drugs as the sports-loving people of this island.

He knows that to change world sport, he first has to get elected. To do so, he may need to steer away from unwelcome controversy. If that is the case, some bland words now are a price worth paying.

Incidentally, his rival Sergey Bubka’s country, Ukraine, is second only to Russia on the list of suspected cheaters.

Someone without any constraints is Lord Moynihan, Coe’s predecessor as British Olympic Association chairman and one of the most persistent champions of clean sport. He told Sportsmail: ‘This is not a major incident, it is a crisis for sport. A crisis for WADA.

‘It is time for far-reaching change. As we fought for at the BOA, there should be a lifetime ban for athletes who use performance- enhancing drugs. But what we see regularly is three- quarters of a suspension waived if the athlete who failed a test says who it was — the coach, the network — who supplied them. It is good to know who supplied the drugs, but there must be an adequate deterrent for the athlete. It cannot be a case of, “Thanks, we’ll see you at the next Olympics”.

‘We need the government to step in. Taking performance-enhancing drugs should be illegal, as it is in France, Austria and Italy.

‘The government is spending millions in Lottery money and it is only right that it should be certain that doping is not taking place under its very nose. I always go back to the six-year-old in a primary school who wants to play sport. That child works hard, believing in sport, only to later be beaten by someone who is on drugs. That is a scandal.’

WADA, an organisation chaired by 74- year- old Sir Craig Reedie, seem to respond to each revelation as if they are bemused onlookers in the fraud of sport. Where is their proactive response?

Yesterday Reedie said: ‘These are wild allegations, wide allegations and we will check them out and have that done with the commission as quickly as possible.’ He sounded like Commander George Churchill-Coleman, head of the Met’s antiterrorist squad in the late Eighties and early Nineties, who would routinely pledge to thwart the next bomb just after the IRA’s last one had gone off.

If the IAAF and WADA are really getting to grips with drugs then what in God’s name are Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Mike Rodgers doing at the World Championships this month?