EURO BID TO WIPE RECORDS
Only punish failed tests, says Regis
EUROPEAN ATHLETICS chiefs are ready to follow UK Athletics in calling for a review of the current record books, putting more pressure on Seb Coe and the International Association of Athletics Federations to look at radical ways of restoring credibility to the sport.
Sportsmail understands the European Athletics Association will appoint a task force to look at European records, some of which are held by athletes from the Eastern Bloc but also from Great Britain. Coe, Mo Farah, Steve Cram, Colin Jackson, Jonathan Edwards and Paula Radcliffe are among them. On Monday, the UK’s governing body sparked a huge debate about the future of the sport with their 14-point manifesto, with a call to erase current world records and essentially start again in a ‘clean new era’. The IAAF responded only with a holding statement but UKA bosses will have the backing of the European body today, with the second half of the independent WADA report into the doping crisis coming tomorrow. Yesterday in Kenya, where a number of British distance runners are training, UKA officials had to request that Turkish athletes believed to be convicted dopers leave the camp.
JOHN REGIS joined calls for Linford Christie to be stripped of his sprint records after UK Athletics confirmed to Sportsmail that their plans for trying to restore confidence in the stricken sport could include scrapping British as well as world records.
Regis vehemently disagrees with UKA’s suggestion of wiping all records and starting from scratch because he believes it would imply all current record holders are cheats.
‘ I think wiping all records is a nonstarter,’ said Regis. ‘You are then wiping the majority of clean athletes who performed and got the best out of themselves. To throw them in with the obvious cheats of the sport is not the way forward.
‘If that were to happen you are essentially saying to those clean record-holders that their many years of torture in training are worth nothing.
‘They’ve categorised everybody as a cheat and are saying, “Now we’ll start from fresh because everybody is clean” — but we all know there will still be cheating in our sport. You can’t draw a line in the sand.’
Regis, who set the current national 200metres record of 19.87sec, prefers the idea of expunging the marks of those like British 100m record-holder Christie. He failed a drugs test in 1999 — six years after running 100m in 9.87sec, which remains the quickest time by a Briton.
Regis said: ‘If an athlete is found guilty of cheating, not only should they be banned for a minimum of eight years but the money they earned should be paid id b back.k Every performancef they have ever made should be stricken from record books.
‘Athletes who should have won medals should also able to sue those athletes to get their rightful rewards. Linford said there was an error, which is his own opinion, but the governing body came to a different conclusion.
‘If we’re going to move forward, certain records will have to be expunged because of individuals failing tests and that’s where you can start from.’
Meanwhile, Darren Campbell said he would be willing to give up his British 4 x 100m record and even his Olympic gold medal from Athens in 2004 if it meant a brighter future.
Campbell said: ‘ We can’t just think about ourselves. If someone said to me, “Give up your gold medal for the sport to be put right” I’d do it because it has no value if people can’t believe what they’ve watched.’
A second World Anti-Doping Agency report will be released in Munich on Thursday. It is expected to draw other countries into alleged extortion plots by former chiefs at the IAAF, the sport’s global governing body, to cover up positive drugs tests.
Campbell thinks the IAAF may have opened itself up to lawsuits from athletes, saying: ‘I think there is the possibility athletes could sue for loss of earnings.’
LAST night the Associated Press claimed to have seen an email suggesting former IAAF president Lamine Diack — now being investigated by the French authorities for allegedly blackmailing athletes to conceal positive tests — received an internal brief in 2012 estimating ‘42 per cent of tested Russian elite athletes doped’ and highlighting concerns about doping in ‘Turkey, Spain, Morocco and Ukraine’.