Olympics: Tokyo committee dismisses suggestion money influenced 2020 bid

The commission laid bare the influence of Diack, who created a cabal which took control of Russian doping cases, and then extorted money from athletes to cover up positive tests.

While the revelations in the report were somewhat anticipated, what caused more surprise during the press conference was that Pound chose to express confidence in current IAAF president and former vice-president Sebastian Coe as one who could restore the trust in the athletics body.

The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is baffled over how a report about the Russian track scandal could stop short of declaring track’s governing body noncompliant with the world’s anti-doping code.

“To achieve this, our sport needs the credibility of the governance structures of the IAAF to be restored and this can only happen through a comprehensive change programme which the IAAF must now embark on. It can not be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own”.

Coe accepted that the organisation’s council should have been aware of the corruption and said he would introduce reforms to ensure there would be no repeat.

Citing leaked internal documents, the AP report also said IAAF officials had considered collaborating with Russians to hide the full extent of the cheating before the London Olympics in 2012.

With cases against nine Russian athletes unresolved and the 2013 world championships looming, the report says Diack explained to a lawyer that he was in a “difficult position that could only be resolved by President Putin of Russia with whom he had struck up a friendship”.

“Most of the report is about the briberies in IAAF, which are not concerned with Russian Federation”.

Pound found that Diack, a Senegalese who stepped down last year after 16 years leading the IAAF, was “responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF”.

“The corruption was embedded in the organization”, Pound said in a damning comment on the IAAF’s handling of drug abuse.

The commission’s report stated Diack junior “stood down as an IAAF marketing consultant in December 2014 due to allegations that he requested a payment of $5 million (£3.5m) during Doha’s failed bid for the 2017 World Athletic Championships”.

The report used the abbreviation LD to refer to Lamine Diack.

French prosecutors investigating Diack and his son have told Sky News they are examining potential links to both World Championships and Olympic Games bidding processes.

In a prepared statement, Tokyo 2020 spokeswoman Hikariko Ono said: “The note in the report is beyond our understanding”.

He has insisted he knew nothing about the corruption and that there was no cover up even though internal IAAF correspondence indicates athletics leaders expressed concern about problems in Russian Federation as far back as 2009.

This defence was supported by the WADA Independent Commission when they unveiled the second part of their report on doping here yesterday.

“There is an enormous amount of reputational recovery, and I can think of no one better than Lord Coe to lead that”.

“It includes clear punishment and penalties for any violations”, Arero said, adding it will go before parliament “in the coming weeks”.