Seven London Marathon winners in drug probe

THE doping crisis engulfing athletics has spread to the London Marathon, with claims t hat seven winners in 12 years have recorded blood test results that suggest they could be drug cheats.

London Marathon boss Nick Bitel criticised the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), for what he perceives as a failure to effectively fight doping.

With less than two weeks to go before the start of the World Championships in Beijing, where the sport will be under greater scrutiny than ever, athletics is lurching from crisis to crisis and now the most visible running race in British sport is under suspicion. The l atest r evelations were published by The Sunday Times based on leaked information from a database containing 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes.

The data shows 30 per cent of winners of the men’s and women’s London Marathon between 2001 and 2012 have recorded suspicious blood scores which indicate possible doping over time to improve their performances.

Chief executive Bitel has already pledged to recover prize-money from any athlete who is found to have cheated their way to victory in the London Marathon.

But he also hit out at the IAAF for not doing enough to stop the cheats.

‘We believe there are people in our sport who are cheating and everyone has a part to play to protect those who are not,’ said Bitel in a statement.

‘ We continue to be at the forefront of anti-doping measures for marathon runners as we are determined to make marathon running a safe haven from doping, but we cannot do it all on our own and rely heavily on the IAAF.’

The London Marathon pays for all its own drug testing but this is carried out by the UK Anti-Doping Agency, which in turn submits its results to the IAAF.

‘We’re doing more than anybody else to fight doping in our sport,’ said Bitel. ‘ We were the first people to call for blood testing and in fact we’re still probably the only event in the world that blood tests all our athletes.

‘What this story is really about is the IAAF’s failure to take effective action. Those athletes that have been caught have only been caught because of the tests at the London Marathon.

‘The IAAF needs to do more to stop people with blood values that are out of the normal range from starting a race.

‘What is concerning is that we’re never told these results even though we’re paying tens of thousands of pounds to get these athletes tested.’

According to The Sunday Times, one i n four winners of major marathons worl d wi d e are suspected of doping and between them they have collected more than £3million in prize-money for their results. Earlier this week, the Russian Liliya Shobukhova was stripped of her three Chicago marathon titles and 2010 London win due to irregularities in her biological passport.

The biological passport was introduced in 2009 by the IAAF and is a next-generation test, analysing results over a period of time for the effects rather than presence of drugs. The London Marathon had already a nnounced it was beginning legal proceedings against Shobukhova to recover prizemoney, which Bitel said on BBC’s Sportsweek programme totalled around £500,000. London is a member of the World Marathon Majors, alongside events in Boston, Chicago, New York, Berlin and Tokyo. The six-race marathon body announced a new antidoping scheme earlier this year.

‘We’ve agreed with the IAAF that we are going to instigate the largest ever anti- doping scheme which will involve hundreds of outof- competition tests for athletes across the world,’ said Bitel.