Germany’s head of athletics has called for an extraordinary meeting of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) after the second part of a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report heaped more pressure on the sport’s scandal-hit governing body.
WADA’s independent commission on Thursday said that the former head of world athletics, Lamine Diack, ran a clique that covered up organized doping and blackmailed athletes while senior officials looked the other way.
“The allegations of corruption against the leadership of the IAAF are so damning, and have shaken the credibility of the world federation to such an extent, that a sign of awakening must be an extraordinary membership meeting,” German Athletics Federation president Clemens Prokop said in a statement yesterday.
The damning report delivered by former WADA president Dick Pound added to the rapidly growing scandal involving organized doping and its concealment that has thrown world athletics into turmoil.
Pound had already rocked the sport in November with the release of the first part of his report, which led to athletics superpower Russia being banned from competition for state-sponsored doping.
However, Thursday’s report said the IAAF’s governing council “could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics and the non-enforcement of applicable anti-doping rules,” piling more pressure on the governing body.
“It is increasingly clear that far more IAAF staff knew about the problems than has currently been acknowledged,” it said. “The corruption was embedded in the organization. It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own.”
The scandal has also drawn comparisons with a corruption and governance scandal at global soccer body FIFA.
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