WADA are yet to clear Paula
Experts hit out at IAAF test claims
PAULA RADCLIFFE and athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, will have to wait until next year to discover whether the World Anti-Doping Agency’s independent commission agree with their assessment that she has been cleared of doping.
The IAAF, mired by an ongoing criminal corruption investigation and facing allegations they failed to follow up suspected doping cases, effectively cleared themselves of blame in a 38-page report.
They also concluded there was no doping case to answer for Radcliffe, who talks exclusively in today’s Mail on Sunday about that verdict, insisting that she is prepared to do anything prove her innocence, including putting up £1million for an MRI brain scan lie detector test.
But Dick Pound, the former WADA president and the lead figure on the commission, says it is too early to speculate about their conclusion.
The commission’s first report was a huge blow for the IAAF and led to Russia’s suspension from athletics and criminal charges against senior IAAF officials, including former president Lamine Diack.
The commission’s second report will be in two parts, to be published in January and Pound told the MoS: ‘We will report on the implication of the IAAF in potentially criminal acts and the other part will be whether it was sufficiently diligent in following up suspicious test results. Whether the IAAF should have been sanctioning people on the basis of these ‘off scores’ [blood values] that were recorded.
‘But we haven’t got the data analysis for that yet. Whether it will make general conclusions or whether it will reach the conclusion that particular athletes are OK or not OK, we haven’t seen yet.’
IAAF anti-doping personnel and president Lord Coe will be questioned by a House of
Commons select committee on Wednesday on allegations that the IAAF did not act on the results of elevated blood levels in some athletes.
The IAAF’s 38-page report, which was released on Friday, was prepared for the select committee and it attempts to rebut serious allegations of negligence made in the summer by anti-doping experts Michael Ashenden and Robin Parisotto, both specialists in blood analysis.
The report is hugely critical of Ashenden and Parisotto’s analysis of the IAAF’s approach and both men defended themselves and hit back yesterday.
‘The irony of a disgraced federation casting aspersions [on me] is not lost on me,’ said Ashenden.
‘The Independent Commission has identified corruption and bribery practices at the highest levels of international athletics, currently under investigation by Interpol.
‘The Independent Commission said that the IAAF was inexplicably lax in following up suspicious blood profiles. I witnessed symptoms of that disgraceful behaviour when I inspected a database drenched with suspect blood profiles. And I made comment accordingly.’
‘The IAAF pleads that it could not have done more. But the blood values were so extreme, over such an extended period, that they should have tried to do something — anything.
‘The IAAF were legally timid when they should have been morally strong.’
Parisotto went on to reveal that the findings he was asked to analyse from a huge database of IAAF blood test results was, in his words, ‘jaw-dropping data [that] drove me — in fact compelled me — to review the database’.
He added: ‘As a health professional, the data revealed to me that so many athletes were at real risk of suffering heart attacks, strokes and even death.
‘While initially driven for the need to identify potential cheats, there was a real underlying concern for athletes who may have been harming themselves, or were being harmed by others.’
He concluded: ‘Perhaps the IAAF should take a “cold shower” and refrain from taking pot-shots until the second WADA Independent Commission investigation [led in part by Pound] is over.’