Former UK Olympian Lord Coe downplays doping claims
What you need to know:
- World athletics body refutes allegations of cover-ups and incompetence
- Lord Coe, a former UK MP, defended the IAAF’s drug-testing system and said it was time to protect the reputation of the sport.
- Other reports suggest that some of the claims maybe true and Boston marathon winner Rita Jeptoo is reported to have said Kenyan athletes are not subjected to blood tests while training.
- Another Kenyan runner is also alleged to have said that the national federation suppresses positive doping results in return for bribes.
- The allegations come only weeks before the world championships in Beijing.
Former UK Olympic champion Sebastian Coe an IAAF vice president, has condemned the witch-hunt against athletes in Kenya and elsewhere over doping allegations made by a German TV company and the Sunday Times newspaper over the weekend.
Lord Coe, a former UK MP, defended the IAAF’s drug-testing system and said it was time to protect the reputation of the sport.
The former champion Olympic middle distance runner described allegations of widespread doping in athletics as a “declaration of war” and says it is time to “come out fighting” to protect the sport’s reputation.
The Sunday Times published data from 5,000 athletes, which it claimed revealed an “extraordinary extent of cheating”. Singled out for attack were Russian athletes and Kenya’s long-distance runners in particular.
“The Doping Secret: The Dark Side of Athletics” alleged that many marathon runners and other track-and-field athletes from Kenya engage in blood doping with substances such as EPO. The reports on German TV and in the Sunday Times said that it was relatively easy to obtain banned performance-enhancing drugs in Kenya.
Kenyan athletes refused to speak to the German documentary maker Hajo Seppelt about the issues, (he has been investigating the issue for some time), but critics say his film presents only circumstantial evidence of corruption among Kenyan sports functionaries.
However, other reports suggest that some of the claims maybe true and Boston marathon winner Rita Jeptoo is reported to have said Kenyan athletes are not subjected to blood tests while training. Another Kenyan runner is also alleged to have said that the national federation suppresses positive doping results in return for bribes.
According to the Sunday Times, 18 of Kenya’s Olympic and world-championships medals between 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes with suspicious blood-test results.
ALLEGED CORRUPTION
On Saturday, ARD/WDR aired a documentary in which a hidden camera purportedly showed Kenyan athletes being injected with performance-enhancing drugs. ARD also alleged corruption among Kenyan officials who it said wanted to cover up the doping.
Reports also pointed out that while dozens of Kenyans have failed drugs tests in the last two years, only Rita Jeptoo, winner of the Boston and Chicago marathons, could be categorised as a top-level runner. Others have mostly been lesser-known athletes.
Athletics’ world governing body, the IAAF, said the blood results were not positive tests or proof of doping. The allegations, according to the IAAF were not new but were obtained from data it had released some time ago.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the IAAF “refuted outright” any allegation it did not appropriately follow up suspicious profiles.
“The use of that database, however it got into their possession, displayed either breathtaking ignorance or a level of malevolence around a set of readings you simply cannot extrapolate beyond,” Coe, who is standing in the IAAF presidential election on 19 August, added.
“The idea that my sport sat there either covering up wrongdoing or just being incompetent could not be wider of the mark…Nobody should underestimate the anger at the way our sport has been portrayed.”
The IAAF says it has a commission of three independent experts who have tested and checked thousands of blood samples.
Lord Coe also said that since 2011, the IAAF has pursued 63 cases based on the biological passport programme, with 39 athletes sanctioned. Coe, who organised the 2012 London Olympics, was speaking on the same day the IAAF issued a statement defending its procedures and calling last weekend’s media allegations “sensationalist and confusing.”
The ARD and Sunday Times reports were based on analysis of the leaked test results by the Australian anti-doping scientists Robin Parisotto and Michael Ashenden.
The allegations come only weeks before the world championships in Beijing.
