skopirovane z najnovsieho e-casaku australskych chodcov, sledujuceho celu dopingovu sagu:

There has been so much going on this week that I will summarise it day by day. Wed 13 January

• On the local Australian front, the big drugs news has been the banning of 34 past and present Australian Rules footaballers from the Essendon Football club. They had initially been given slaps on the wrist by the Australian Rules Drugs Commission but CAS came in and has ruled for much more significant penalties. See http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl- news/cas-essendon-verdict-damns-players-for-lack-of-curiosity-20160112-gm4o7u.html. Not related to our current T&F issue but interesting reading for us Aussies.

• Late Wednesday evening saw the latest leak of documents from within the IAAF – this is truly explosive. To summarise: Six years before the IAAF banned Russia, track and field's governing body knew of doping so out of control it feared Russian athletes could die from abuse of blood-boosting drugs and transfusions, and officials considered collaborating with Russians to hide the full extent of the cheating before the 2012 London Olympics, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm c_id=19&objec­tid=11572991&ref=rss and http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm c_id=19&objec­tid=11572990&ref=rss. Timeline explained at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm c_id=19&objec­tid=11572980&ref=rss.

• WADA immediately commented on the revelations, saying they were „most concerning“ and warrant further investigation. Bit of an understatement! See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm?….

• Sebastian Coe came out with his usual recorded piece, defiantly defending his handling of athletics’ worst drugs scandal as he braced himself for more revelations from the second part of the damning report WADA into the saga. Coe hit back at accusations that he had failed to appreciate the seriousness of the crisis to have engulfed the IAAF, insisting that he had been “dealing with it every day”. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…oe-defiantly- defends-handling-of-athletics-worst-drugs-scandal-as-he-braces-himself-for-more-revelations.html.

• Coe also said there has been no cover up of Russian doping cases despite the latest leaked documents appearing to show that officials of athletics' governing body were discussing how to suppress news of positive tests. Coe also denied knowledge of IAAF officials discussing Russian doping problems as early as 2009 and of internal IAAF notes obtained by the Associated Press proposing some Russian dopers be sanctioned while other, less well-known athletes be allowed to disappear from the sport unpunished. See http://www.supersport.com/…article.aspx?…. Please! Talk about treating the public like naive children.

• And here is the crunch line that must be haunting the IAAF – Kenyan two-time world marathon champion Edna Kiplagat wants $1 million dollars to be retrospectively awarded to her as the rivals who pipped her to two lucrative World Marathon Majors series titles have since been banned for doping. Russia's Liliya Shobukhova beat Kiplagat to scoop the $500,00 series jackpot in 2010/2011, and the Kenyan runner finished second in the rankings to compatriot Rita Jeptoo in 2013/2014. Both women were later suspended for doping. The first of many perhaps! S See http://www.supersport.com/…article.aspx?….

• This raises the bigger question of monetary reparation for all those athletes retrospectively awarded medals. Great article at http://mobile.nytimes.com/…more-than-an- apology.html?_r=1.

• Finally, here is an interview, coincidentally also published on Wednesday, with the courageous Russian couple who sparked all this as whistleblowers. I still haven't heard that they have ever been invited to meet with the IAAF! It is astounding that this remains the case after all this time. See https://www.beinsports.com/…ew-with-dick- pound/176211.

Thursday 14 January

• The highly awaited WADA Commission Report Part II came out on Thursday 14 January 2016. You can read it in full at https://wada-main-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/…_2016_en.pdf.

• If you don't want to read the whole report, here is the definitive summary, written by Andy Brown who has been working in Sports Governance for over 15 years. See http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/…f-staff-were- aware-of-corruption/.

• WADA's second report shifted attention from Russia to the ruling body overseeing the sport globally: the IAAF. Well before the antidoping commission’s in­vestigation, the I.A.A.F. knew the extent of Russia’s drug abuse, Mr. Pound said. Top officials, the inquiry found, were complicit in keeping tainted athletes in competition, extorting money from athletes and delaying the processing of drug test violations. Unlike Russian coaches, trainers, doctors and the state police — whom the commission accused of actively destroying drug samples — IAAF officials did not erase records but rather delayed processing them, expecting that inaction might make matters go away, the inquiry found. The report raised new questions about how compromised sports officials can be in investigating and disciplining doping violations. See http://www.nytimes.com/…ficials.html partner=rssnyt&­emc=rss&_r=0

• The report honed in on Coe's Chief of Staff Nick Davies, saying that he „was well aware of Russian ‚skeletons‘ in the cupboard“. The report also said the IAAF Council, which included Coe, „could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics“. See http://www.supersport.com/…article.aspx?….

The report raises plenty of alarms for the IAAF, including the following

• As well as the already publicised extortion of Russia’s Liliya Shobukhova, the report says Turkey's London Olympic 1500m champion Asli Alptekin Cakir was asked for €650,000 to avoid a drugs ban. The report calls for a “forensic investigation” into how the TV rights for the 2013 World Championships held in Moscow increased from $6 million to $25 million thanks a to sponsorship arrangement organised by Diack’s son. While the investigators were only looking at Russia and the IAAF, the report names a number of other countries as being suspected of blood doping and where testing is problematic. Those countries include Turkey, Ukraine, Kenya, Morocco and Spain. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…l-QandA.html.

• The report does not name Coe as amongst those to be investigated further. It says that Diack created an inner circle „which filtered and funnelled communications to and from senior IAAF staff, ultimately functioning as an informal illegitimate governance structure outside the formal IAAF governance structure … when it came to dealing with anti-doping matters related to Russian track and field athletes.“ The circle included his sons Papa Masada Diack and Khalil Diack and his legal counsel Habib Cisse. Now resigned IAAF anti-doping department director Gabriel Dolle was also involved. But Pound insisted that „I can't think of anyone better than Coe to lead“ and said the case offered „a fantastic opportunity“ for the sport to clean up. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm?….

• This last statement seems rather contradictory given that the report found that the IAAF president, who served for 12 years on its council before his election last summer, “could not have been unaware” of the scale of the drugs problem in Russia that has brought athletics to its knees and that he and other elected officials showed “no appetite” to tackle it or the “nepotism” that allowed his predecessor, Lamine Diack, to orchestrate one of the most corrupt – “criminal” – regimes ever seen in sport.

• So it does not mean that Coe is in the clear and there are plenty of voices still loudly calling for his resignation. This case is summed up quite nicely in http://www.iol.co.za/…t-go-1971597.

• The second report is good but the one issue I have with it is what looks like a whitewash with regard to Coe's accounta­bility. Nicely summed up in http://www.iol.co.za/…hing-1971391.

• So as usual, it is a case of two steps forward and one step back in the war against drugs. David Walsh also took aim at the report with this tweet. Been thinking about that Wada IC report. IC's failure to declare IAAF ‚non-compliant with Wada code‘ was scandalous dereliction of duty

Friday 15 January

• IAAF President Sebastian Coe responded in Friday to one of the key findings in the Report and promised to investigate the whereabouts of a sponsorship worth $25 million supposedly paid to the world governing body by a Russian bank. The IAAF are, as of yet, unable to account for the payments but the suspicion is that a large proportion of the money was pocketed by the Diacks. See http://www.insidethegames.biz/…r-25-million- sponsorship-payment-from-russian-bank.

Sunday 17 January

• Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s ‘Sportsweek’ programme, Sebastian Coe made the following plea: “If there are athletes out there at this moment listening to this programme… if they think they have been subject to extortion, come forward. Come forward to the (IAAF) Ethics Board, come forward to me, go and speak to WADA. We need to understand how far and how wide this goes.” See http://www.iaaf.org/…ce-extortion.

• As of Sunday, the Independant is still not convinced that Sebastian Coe’s flaws mean he is the wrong man to clean up athletics. See http://www.independent.co.uk/…wrong-man-to- clean-up-athletics-a6816741.html. Monday 18 January

• IAAF President Sebastian Coe now says claims of bribery by Qatar in the bidding process for the 2017 world athletics championship are being investigated. Ed Warner, chairman of UK Athletics, said Sunday his bid team was told „brown envelopes“ were being handed to members of the IAAF Council the night before the vote in 2011 between London and Qatari capital Doha, which London won. Warner also said his team agreed to spend $7.2 million to cover prize money, having been warned they were unlikely to succeed if they did not. Speaking on BBC Radio alongside Warner, Coe said he was unaware of the claims and promised to look into them. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/…/article.cfm c_id=19&objec­tid=11575514&ref=rss.

Wow, that's what I call a tumultuous week for the IAAF!