A World Anti-Doping Agency report released today said track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, was corrupted from the inside by a “powerful rogue group” led by its president, and they conspired to extort athletes and allow doping Russians to continue competing.
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Pound had already rocked global athletics in November with the first part of his report, which led to athletics superpower Russian Federation being banned from worldwide competition for state-sponsored doping. If, therefore, the circle of knowledge was so extensive why was nothing done?
IAAF president Lord Coe is braced for more disclosures in athletics’ doping and corruption crisis when the second part of an independent investigation into the scandal is revealed on Thursday.
A report has detailed “embedded” corruption at the governing body of world athletics and suggested collusion between Russian and IAAF officials at the highest levels in a coverup of mass doping in Russian sport.
French prosecutors are investigating Lamine Diack, his lawyer Habib Cisse, Papa Massata Diack and Gabriel Dolle, the IAAF’s former anti-doping director, on suspicion of corruption, and will also give an update on their investigation on Thursday, after the WADA commission’s news conference.
“You are going to have to through financial records, documents, computer records, cell phones”, McLaren said.
– According to transcripts cited in the report, Turkey lost Lamine Diack’s support in the battle to host the 2020 Olympics when they did not pay “sponsorship monies of $4 to $5million either to the Diamond League or IAAF”.
When 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes was leaked last August, some experts claimed it showed “the extraordinary extent of cheating” among endurance athletes and proved the IAAF had failed to act on suspicious tests.
The IAAF has come in for heavy criticism in recent months after being accused of helping cover up systematic doping in Russian Federation.
It certainly looks like it. When that was put to Pound, he said Coe should not carry the can for the failings of a whole council and the organisational failings at the IAAF.
In a word: No. The report explicitly states that “corruption was imbedded in the organisation… it can not be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own”.
“There is an enormous amount of reputational recovery, and I can think of no one better than Lord Coe to lead that”. He did so to enable Cissé to manage and follow up Russian athlete biological passport cases.
“We can’t just sit here and say we deserve trust”, Coe said. “We don’t – we have to win that back”.
“Nor am I aware of any doping case that was not brought that should have been brought, or of any doping ban that was not published when it should have been published under the IAAF Rules”.
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In a statement, Athletics Ireland CEO John Foley said: “The extent of the revelations around corruption in the IAAF is massively troubling for anyone involved in athletics”. According to its website, Interpol has also posted a wanted person’s alert for Papa Massata Diack, Mr. Diack’s son who had served as a marketing consultant to the IAAF.
