Australian weightlifting boss Sam Coffa will reportedly be criticized for his inaction over lifters' positive doping tests, in a report on a yearlong investigation to be released today.
Coffa's management style and passiveness over repeated doping offenses by Australian lifters will be denounced in the report, according to the Australian newspaper said yesterday.
US lawyer Richard Young was appointed by Richard Ings, chairman of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, to investigate any alleged drug links in the sport after several Australian lifters tested positive in the past two years.
Young, a World Anti-Doping Agency investigator, had been involved in the US anti-doping inquiry into the BALCO conspiracy that led to a number of leading US athletes being handed lengthy doping bans.
Ings called in Young after two Australian weightlifters, Camilla Fogagnolo and Jenna Myers, tested positive for a banned stimulant.
The Young report will also look into the drug conviction of banned weightlifter Caleb Loades, and the positive tests of suspended athletes Sergo Chakhoyan and Corran Hocking for the stimulant benzylpiperazine.
Coffa, 70, was also the International Weightlifting Federation first vice president and was re-elected four weeks ago for another term as president of the Australian Commonwealth Games Association. Coffa has been in charge of Australian weightlifting since 1983.
The Australian newspaper said Young this month successfully obtained what is understood to be sensitive computer data from Coffa's offices in Melbourne which shows a lack of financial records which resulted in the Australian Sports Commission cutting off the sport's annual taxpayer-funded grants.
Since the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March, the ASC has frozen the funding set aside to hire a national head coach.
The newspaper said Young's report does not link Coffa to a parallel probe into allegations of systemic drug abuse by athletes.
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