Doping scandal hits international track and field
Drug tests for third of medalists ‘suspicious’
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Three weeks before the world championships, track and field was thrown into turmoil by new accusations of widespread doping and experts denouncing an anti-doping system compromised by leniency.
The World Anti-Doping Agency responded to the “wild allegations” made by two European media outlets of suspicious drug tests in track and field by asking an independent body to investigate.
WADA President Craig Reedie said he was surprised by the scale of the allegations, including that one-third of medals in endurance races at the Olympics and world championships over a 10-year period were won by athletes who recorded suspicious doping tests.
German broadcaster ARD and the Sunday Times newspaper in Britain said they obtained access to the results of 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes. The files came from the database of the International Association of Athletics Federations and were leaked by a whistleblower, according to the reports.
Anti-doping scientist Robin Parisotto, who reviewed the data from the period covering 2001 to 2012 with blood doping expert Michael Ashenden, was critical of the federation, saying many athletes appeared to “have doped with impunity, and it is damning that the IAAF appears to have idly sat by and let this happen.”
The IAAF and WADA were already investigating accusations made in two previous ARD documentaries of alleged systematic doping and cover-ups in Russia.
Reedie said material from the new ARD program and Sunday Times would be turned over to WADA’s independent commission for investigation.
“These are wild allegations, wide allegations, and we’ll have to check them out and we’ll have done that by the commission as quickly as possible,” Reedie said in Kuala Lumpur, where he was attending International Olympic Committee meetings.
The ARD program, called “Doping Top Secret: The Shadowy World of Athletics,” was broadcast three weeks before the world championships in Beijing, which run from Aug. 22-30.