Coe Acknowledges Athletics Doping Cover Up

Diack, who was replaced as IAAF president by Sebastian Coe a year ago, is under investigation by French prosecutors as part of a corruption inquiry and was suspended from his role as an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee in November.

The IAAF, which is the world’s athletics governing body, has come under criticism since the allegations came to light, and last week, senior officials Papa Massata Diack – the son of former IAAF president Lamine Diack – Valentin Balakhnichev and Alexei Melnikov were issued with lifetime bans.

The report also reveals Diack told the IAAF ” s legal chief Huw Roberts that Russian doping cases ahead of the 2013 Moscow world championships left him “in a hard position that could only be resolved by President Putin of Russia with whom he had struck up a friendship”. Former president Lamine Diack, Coe’s predecessor, orchestrated the corruption by creating “an informal illegitimate governance structure”, sanctioning the extortion of athletes, and the organisation had inadequate procedures in place to prevent that corruption. Other IAAF leaders must also have been aware of the scale of doping in Russian Federation but did nothing to stop it, the WADA panel’s damning report said.

“It is increasingly clear that far more IAAF staff knew about the problems than has now been acknowledged”, the WADA report said.

Pound has included Coe as a member of the IAAF executive who should have known about Diack’s corruption and bribery, yet in virtually the same breath promoted Coe as the saviour of athletics. However, critically, Pound gave his full backing to Coe remaining as president, saying he could not think of anyone better to reform the organisation.

Diack alleged directed Dolle to insert lawyer Habib Cisse into the department to manage the results of the Russian Athlete Biological Passport cases.

The IAAF has claimed that corruption was limited to a few rogue individuals. The anti-doping system run by Sport Ireland is credible, comprehensive and stands up to the highest scrutiny, as are the majority of national federations programmes, but it’s important that any doubts around other countries testing procedures are thoroughly investigated.

WADA’s first report into the IAAF in November led to the banning of Russian Federation from athletics for state-sponsored doping.

Coe was effusive in his praise of Diack when he beat Sergey Bubka in an election to succeed the disgraced Senegalese in August.

Diack’s son Papa and two Russian officials were last week banned from athletics for life by an IAAF ethics board for covering up an elite Russian athlete’s positive dope test and blackmailing her over it. “And, as they say, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”. “Whether it can do so, I don’t know”.

The sports minister, Tracey Crouch, said: “The findings of Wada’s independent commission are extremely alarming. We need more governance in place and I will put it in place so future presidents and future councils have proper accountability and can challenge and be challenged”. The first report was the culmination of a almost year-long investigation into Russia’s track-and-field industry that began after a German documentary, “Top Secret Doping: How Russia makes its winners” was released in December 2014.