(ATR) Sylvia Barlag is defending IAAF president Seb Coe’s efforts to reform the athletics federation currently inundated with issues involving doping and governance.
In comments to the Times of London, WADA Independent Commission chairman Richard Pound says Coe and his colleagues should have dealt with these issues "a long time ago".
Council member Berlag says Coe has confronted the problems facing the IAAF.
"Seb championed the establishment of the Ethics Commission and Code on the IAAF Council," says Barlag, from the Netherlands.
"I’d been on the council for two years and especially considering he’d come straight off leading the London Olympics he impressively drove the process forward with us."
However, Pound believes Coe and vice president Sergey Bubka could have done more to initiate change while serving under former president Lamine Diack who is currently in the custody of French authorities.
"Coe and Bubka were there," Pound told the Times.
"They had an opportunity a long time ago to address issues of governance, and you saw from the International Olympic Committee what happens if you don't do that," he says, referring to the Salt Lake City vote-buying scandal.
In December, Coe told British Parliament that his role as vice president was minimal due to his role organizing the London 2012 Games.
"I was aware we had a [doping] problem, but the specific numbers, I did not," Coe told Parliament. Pound says this is no excuse.
"It's easy enough if you want to get a governance review. They had a (19th-century) constitution in a 21st-century organization," he argues.
Around the Rings understands that there is some confusion among IAAF officials about why Pound would offer incendiary remarks about Coe as the IAAF and WADA are both working together to protect clean sport.
"Without the Independent Commission the IAAF would not have had the mechanisms in place to investigate these matters which resulted in the sanctions which were delivered yesterday," says Barlag, referencing the three lifetime bans handed out by the IAAF on Thursday.
Pound is set to release the second part of the Independent Commission report next Thursday, focusing more on the IAAF officials involved in the doping cover-ups as opposed to the violations of the All-Russian Athletics Federation exposed in part one.
Written by KevinNutley
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribersonly.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
