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 Britain's Sunday Times newspaper and Germany's ARD/WDR broadcaster
reported on Sunday they had obtained secret data from the IAAF,
supplied by a whistleblower, that indicated suspicions of widespread
blood doping in athletics.
"There are allegations made, no evidence. We want to look into them
seriously because to say that in athletics between 2001 and 2012 we
did not do a serious job with tests is laughable," IAAF president
Lamine Diack told Reuters in response to the reports.
Coming only weeks before track and field's showpiece event, the
reports claim endurance runners suspected of doping had been winning
a third of the medals at Olympic Games and world championships in
that period.
The reports did not say that any athletes had failed doping tests,
only that the tests had been abnormal, which can sometimes be a sign
of cheating.
The allegations are the latest setback to tarnish the multi-billion
dollar world of sport after the scandal at soccer's global governing
body, FIFA.
Athletics are a central part of the Olympics, the only sporting
event that rivals soccer's World Cup in scale and which collects
billions of dollars from sponsors like Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Visa
and McDonald's.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach told
reporters on Monday he had spoken to the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA) head Craig Reedie and had full confidence in that body to
investigate the claims thoroughly.
"I don't know about the detailed allegations, which athletes, which
competitions are affected," he said.
Bach said the IOC would act with "zero tolerance" if there should be
a case involving results at an Olympic Games.
"But at this time we have nothing more than allegations and we have
to respect the presumption of innocence for the athletes," he said.
"I LAUGHED"
Medals won could be affected if any cases of doping were
subsequently unearthed using newer testing techniques that did not
exist at the time.
"I do not know what we are dealing with," Senegal's Diack said. "It
is possible if we discover with new techniques that someone doped
etcetera, etcetera then yes, otherwise no."
"But I laughed when I read between 2001 and 2012 IAAF did not do the
work," he said. Arne Ljungqvist, the head of the IOC's medical
commission, had worked hard to combat doping in that period, Diack
said.
The reports come weeks before a new IAAF president will be elected,
with Britain's Sebastian Coe and Sergey Bubka of Ukraine bidding to
replace the retiring Diack.
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, one of the most influential figures
in world sport, appeared skeptical about the timing of the
allegations before that election.
The Kuwaiti, who is the head of the Olympic Council of Asia and the
Association of National Olympic Committees, told Reuters: "I'm
hearing all those news (but) I don't have the big picture."
"If there is some mess I hope it will be solved by the mechanism of
the governance and anti-doping. If not, related to election time I
will understand it."
Earlier, U.S. anti-doping agency chief executive Travis Tygart said
an "aggressive review" was needed to protect clean athletes. WADA
has said it was "very disturbed" by the reports.
"This is more evidence of what many of us already suspected," Tygart
told Reuters.
The IAAF noted that the reports were based on confidential
information obtained without permission.
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A heavy preponderance of the "abnormal" results were from Russian
athletes, according to the media reports. Russian sports minister
Vitaly Mutko has said the allegations had "nothing to do with
Russia" and that they reflected a power battle before the IAAF
leadership vote.
The IAAF's world athletics championships begin in Beijing on Aug.
22.
In the report, Australian doping expert Robin Parisotto and another
scientist, Michael Ashendon, said more than 800 athletes had
recorded one or more "abnormal" results, defined as a result that
had less than one chance in 100 of being natural.
Such athletes accounted for 146 medals at top events, including 55
golds, the Sunday Times said.
"There were 800-odd abnormal or suspicious results but not all of
those would have been truly indicative of doping," Parisotto told
Reuters.
Factors such as the timing of tests, altitude and testing conditions
could have led to some suspicious results.
"But there were values that were ... quite extreme and even taking
into consideration confounding factors, there was really no
disputing what that data was telling us," Parisotto said.
Blood tests were not used as an official sanctioning tool until 2009
but the leaked data still showed a high number of suspicious or
abnormal test results subsequently, he said.
"There are real questions to be asked if there is no action taken,
particularly for the results taken post-2009," Parisotto said. "Some
of the values in these athletes were so extreme that they were
downright dangerous and the risks to their health were
indisputable."
Russia accounted for 415 abnormal tests, followed distantly by
Ukraine, Morocco, Spain, Kenya, Turkey and others.
"A remarkable 80 percent of Russia's medal winners had recorded
suspicious scores at some point in their careers," the Sunday Times
said.
The allegations concern techniques to improve the ability of blood
to carry oxygen, which can give an advantage in endurance events
like cycling or running over medium and long distances.
The Sunday Times and ARD said they were given access to the results
of more than 12,000 tests of more than 5,000 athletes taken between
2001 and 2012.
The two experts concluded distance running was in the same state as
cycling had been when Lance Armstrong won the seven Tour de France
victories of which he has since been stripped.
"So many athletes appear to have doped with impunity, and it is
damning that the IAAF appears to have sat idly by and let this
happen," Parisotto, an inventor of the test used to detect the blood
doping agent EPO, told the Sunday Times.
(Additional reporting by Julian Linden in KUALA LUMPUR, Steve
Ginsburg in WASHINGTON, Lincoln Feast in SYDNEY, Peter Rutherford in
SINGAPORE and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait)
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