WADA report: Corruption was ’embedded’ in IAAF

The new report begs to differ and although commission chairman Dick Pound backed Coe, present for Thursday’s WADA press conference in Munich, the former golden boy of British athletics remains in a precarious position.

Pound, a former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), 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.

Pound, the former WADA president, has written two reports chronicling rampant corruption by the IAAF to cover up doping cases.

But Pound told a news conference on Thursday with Coe in attendance: “As far as the ability of Lord Coe to remain at the head of the IAAF, I think it’s a fabulous opportunity for the IAAF, to seize this opportunity and under a strong leadership to move forward”.

“There is an enormous amount of reputational recovery, and I can think of no one better than Lord Coe to lead that”. Interpol said it had issued an worldwide wanted notice for Massata Diack.

IAAF president Sebastian Coe found himself at the eye of the storm on Thursday following fresh revelations about doping cover-ups at the top of his organisation.

Dollé was last week banned for five years by the IAAF Ethics Commission, avoiding a more severe sentence because they ruled his “sins were those of omission, not commission”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and then-IAAF President Lamine Diack attend the opening ceremony for the world track championships in Moscow in 2013.

It said it was “completely improper governance” to allow supervision of suspected Russian doping cases to be separately managed by the IAAF President’s personal legal counsel.

On Wednesday, Lord Coe told Sky News while he was aware that Russian Federation had a major issue with doping because of the high number of positive tests and prosecutions, he was not aware of any internal attempts to cover up cases.

McClaren also revealed Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova was unlikely to have been the only athlete blackmailed by IAAF officials.

Massata Diack, Cisse and Dolle are also under investigation in France along with Lamine Diack, who has been barred from leaving the country.

The son of Diack, Papa Massata Diack – a former IAAF consultant – as well as Balakhnichev and Russia’s former chief coach for long-distance athletes Alexei Melnikov, were all banned for life.

“The corruption was imbedded in the organization”, the report said.

Mr. Pound said given the concentration of power at the IAAF, the infrequency of meetings and the limited information council members received from the president, Mr. Coe’s claims that he didn’t know of the corruption were credible.

Pound’s report will centre on how the IAAF followed up on positive results and to examine the IAAF database to see whether there were any abnormal anti-doping test results and if so, when and how the IAAF followed them up.

Extracts of that email, which was published by French newspaper Le Monde on December 21, included mention of an “unofficial PR campaign” for damage limitation regarding the release of details about failed doping tests by Russian athletes ahead of the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Moscow. “I have one objective now – to get this back into safe hands”.

Pound still produced a litany of accusations against the IAAF.

The IAAF responded to the AP report by saying that every suspicious Athlete Biological Passport profile was investigated in full and that nothing was covered-up.