WADA chairman Dick Pound: ‘Sebastian Coe best man to clean up IAAF’

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

Dick Pound, the author of WADA’s second report detailing doping violations by Russian athletes and officials, wrote that corruption in the IAAF “was embedded in the organization. I’m dealing with it every day and I have been dealing with this since, effectively, the first day I took over the role as president”.

“The corruption was embedded in the organisation”.

Coe was in attendance at the news conference in a Munich hotel, which attracted huge media attention, and French prosecutors who are also investigating were present as well.

Pound found that Diack, a Senegalese who stepped down as president of the IAAF previous year, had established his own “informal, illegitimate governance structure” at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). She said a French arrest warrant for Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, was issued on December 16.

Neither the IAAF nor Wada was available for comment. They shed light on key junctures in Russia’s doping crisis, which has been muddied by allegations that IAAF and Russian officials took bribes from athletes to hide doping.

Former Dutch pentathlete Sylvia Barlag was speaking ahead of an anti-doping agency report expected to criticize IAAF handling of a doping scandal that has shaken the sport.

As Coe fights to preserve his reputation and safeguard the future of his sport, memories fade of his 1980s glory days, when he won gold in the 1,500 metres at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

Days later in Istanbul, Papa Massata Diack met the runner and her husband and payments of 100,000-250,000 euros ($110,000-$273,000) were discussed.

It also tells of a lawyer who was handpicked by Diack to handle Russian cases even though he had little experience with anti-doping measures.

Prosecutors suspect Lamine Diack of taking more than €1m (£757,000) to cover up doping.

Interpol has issued a global red notice that Papa Massata Diack is wanted for questioning in France.

“The IAAF was not robust and rigorous in dealing with countries including Russian Federation”.

Pound “does not believe” Coe lied when he said he did not know about the corruption.

“As far as the ability of Lord Coe to remain as head of the IAAF, I think it’s a fabulous opportunity for the IAAF to seize this opportunity and under strong leadership to move forward”, Pound said. “We all have our fingers crossed”. “Continued denial will simply make it more hard to make genuine progress”, Pound said. Of course there was cover-up and delay and all sorts of things.

Mr Diack, who was replaced by Sebastian Coe as president last August, is under investigation by French police for corruption and was heavily criticised in WADA’s first report. Also receiving lifetime bans were the former president of Russia’s track federation and its top distance-running and race-walking coach.

When asked by reporters if Coe’s position as IAAF president is tenable, Pound said: “We have not descended to any individual athletes or sports official”. He did so to enable Cisse to manage and follow up Russian athlete biological passport cases.

Several IAAF staff have said they sought to draw attention to the doping abuses to leaders but were ignored.

Specifically, the report concludes there was no way the IAAF Council – which included current IAAF President Sebastian Coe – could have been unaware of the extent of Russia’s doping program.

Coe was a member of the decision-making IAAF council as a vice-president between 2007 and 2015 before succeeding Lamine Diack as president.