World athletics’ beleaguered governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), was meeting yesterday to flesh out the measures that track and field powerhouse Russia needs to implement in order to resume international competition after its suspension over state-sponsored doping.
The IAAF Council meeting was presided over by Sebastian Coe, the British two-time Olympic 1500m gold medalist who has found himself at the center of unwanted attention since taking over the presidency over claims of a conflict of interest concerning his continuing paid role as an ambassador for US sportswear giant Nike.
However, it was Russia that was to top yesterday’s agenda, just three weeks after the IAAF acted on a sensational report by an independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that found evidence of state-sponsored doping and large-scale corruption in Russian athletics.
Photo: EPA
The IAAF not only slapped a temporary ban on Russia, but also stripped it of the right to host the World Junior Championships and the World Race Walking Team Championships.
With Russian athletes likely to miss out on the World Indoor Championships in Portland, Oregon, in March, the race is on for an effective roadmap to be put in place to ensure the country complies with WADA guidelines to allow the athletes to compete at next year’s Rio Olympics.
In related news, Coe has admitted that the process by which the 2021 world championships were awarded to Eugene, Oregon, was wrong, the Times newspaper reported yesterday.
Bjorn Eriksson, who led a rival bid by Gothenburg for the 2021 championships, said Coe telephoned him on Wednesday to say it had been wrong to give the event to Eugene without a formal bid process, the Times reported.
However, Coe said that he had not been responsible for the decision that was made in April, the report said.
Eriksson also said Coe had indicated that the Eugene award was being investigated by French police as part of a corruption inquiry into the IAAF leadership of Lamine Diack, who stood down in August.
Diack is also under investigation over allegations that he took bribes from Russian officials to cover up positive drug tests by athletes.
“If I understand Sebastian Coe correctly, he said, ‘I agree that the procedure wasn’t correct,’ but he claims he wasn’t involved in this, others are,” Eriksson said.
Coe had been a strong supporter of Eugene’s bid for the 2021 championships and was part of the IAAF council that voted this year to abandon the normal bidding process.
Nike, which was founded in Eugene, was also a powerful backer of the bid.
Coe acts as a paid ambassador to Nike and on Tuesday the BBC said it had seen an e-mail in which a Nike executive said Coe had assured him he would “reach out” to Diack on behalf of Eugene.
Coe has denied any wrongdoing and any conflict of interest in his Nike deal.
“They [the IAAF] have to be investigated and he [Coe] would agree to that because if you are going to clear up the mess within the IAAF you must go to the bottom,” Eriksson was quoted as saying. “And I want to know was this bad ethics or was this bad ethics combined with something else?”
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