No doping cover-ups ahead of London Olympics — IAAF

After Russia’s competition ban for alleged “state-sponsored doping”, Lamine Diack, the former IAAF president, was placed under criminal investigation over allegations he took payments for deferring sanctions against Russian drugs cheats.

IAAF chairman Lord Coe said at the time: “This has been a shameful wake-up call”.

Sessions also focused on organizational issues that are necessary to quickly consider doping cases, investigating problems mentioned in the report by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Independent Commission, collecting information about the location of athletes and comprehensive testing of Russian athletes before WADA restores the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), as well as educational and other measures necessary for introducing zero tolerance policy for doping in Russian athletics.

The documents were leaked to AP by a person who used to work for the IAAF’s anti-doping program.

At that stage, the test results weren’t enough on their own to sanction athletes, but they provided an early warning of the crisis and raise questions about why the organization entrusted with the safekeeping of one of the world’s major sports waited six years before suspending Russian Federation, which could see its athletes miss the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August.

An International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) inspection team, in Russia to verify the reforms made by the country’s athletics federation, enjoyed “frank and open” talks with Russian officials on Monday.

Radcliffe, who set the women’s marathon record with a time of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 25 seconds at the 2003 London Marathon, was cleared by the IAAF past year of doping allegations following media reports of suspicious blood tests. A list from the IAAF’s anti-doping department, dated November 3, 2011, names 23 Russian athletes with “abnormal” blood profiles whose cases are at different stages in the pipeline toward possible sanctions.

The IAAF said these proposals were never put into action, and Balakhnichev told AP they never reached him.

Internal IAAF notes, copies of which were reproduced in the story, also proposed a two-track approach to punishing Russian dopers.

The crisis-stricken IAAF is braced for further blows to its credibility this week, with the second part of the World Anti-Doping Agency report into Russian doping to come on Thursday.

It said that the Russian athletics federation must “clean house” by showing that none of its directors, officers and staff “has any past involvement in doping” and “must sever ties with anyone who can not meet this requirement”.

IAAF spokesman Chris Turner told AP: “No cases were concealed or suppressed – the IAAF simply tackled them in order of importance”.

Turner said a colleague of Dolle’s objected to the proposed non-disclosure of bans and they were published. IAAF correspondence shows that the governing body feared that athletes could kill themselves due to their extensive use of EPO and blood transfusions.

Diack is facing corruption and money laundering charges in France, accused of taking more than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in a scheme to blackmail athletes and cover up their doping positives. A Moscow laboratory that handled drug testing during the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 also lost its accreditation as a result of the report, and Interpol, the worldwide police organisation, announced a global investigation into corruption within the sport. Also banned for life were Balakhnichev and Alexei Melnikov, former head coach of Russia’s race-walking and long-distance running programs.