Glued to YouTube, immersed on Twitter, the foot soldiers of track and field can only have followed the latest revelations to tarnish and traumatise their sport yesterday with a depressing feeling of habitude, the 89 pages of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s exposé of who knew what, where and when amid the IAAF’s cesspit of corruption further undermining the governing body’s authority to rule and reform.
Those competing have grown used to the unsaid questions posed when their performances rise above the norm. Suspicion has become part of the gambit. Yet there is a sense that Sebastian Coe, who once trod in their shoes, must move with even greater haste than he showed in bolting from the conference room in Munich once Dick Pound’s evisceration of the IAAF’s preceding regime was complete.
Credibility has been lost, Beth Potter acknowledges. Now that it is beyond dispute that Russian doping was covered up, attention will turn to those countries – Turkey, Ukraine, Spain, Kenya and Morocco – where transparency is opaque.
And although the Scot, who saw Laila Traby - her rival in the 10000m final at the 2014 European Championships – handed a three-year ban after testing positive for banned performance enhancer EPO, the ban currently threatening Russia’s involvement at Rio 2016 is only one step towards restoring her faith in the way track and field is run.
“From that year in the Europeans and in the Commonwealths I’ve been bumped up a place because of drugs cheats,” Potter said. “So hopefully having a country that are renowned for cheating you feel like you’re competing on a level playing field a little bit more but I know there’s obviously others who are cheating, but if you take one country out of the equation it makes you feel a little bit better. You can never really know. I don’t trust anyone. I’m a bit sceptical now.”
Often drowned out amid the noise surrounding the cheats, the wave of calls from the sport’s clean contingent to level the playing field without steamrolling over the performances set legitimately and without suspicion could become Coe’s greatest spur to move on from what he finally admits is a “horror show”.
A thorough judicial process in France, however, is ongoing. Even the glimpse afforded yesterday by their prosecutor Eliane Houette, detailing the bundles of cash found at the home of now-banned former IAAF head of doping Gabriel Dollé, hinted that there will be further revelations to emerge in the weeks and months ahead with Coe’s predecessor Lamine Diack and his two sons seemingly destined to be tried in a court of law.
If there is a shred of light for the sport, it is that the design of their testing regime has been deemed for purpose by WADA. It is just that when cheats are identified, prosecution and punishment must follow rather than swept silently under the carpet.
“With all the news recently, you can’t help but lose a bit of trust,” world indoor 60m champion Richard Kilty said. “You never know. You see the Russia thing blow up and then you wonder how many other countries’ athletes are doing stuff. You need to completely clamp down on it. You see now that Switzerland have decided to do their own thing rather than use the IAAF’s testing.
“Something major is needed because it’s not nice to be on the start line wondering if this guy beside you has used something. Last year you had five of the (100m) finalists in Beijing who were previous drug users. That’s disheartening. And it’s up to the IAAF to put the trust back into the clean athletes and ensure we’re competing on a level playing field.”
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