Doping cloud casts long shadow over world athletics championships

As athletics gears up for the world championships in Beijing, a sport torpedoed by explosive allegations of widespread doping will be desperately hoping to avoid further scandal.

After winning the vote to become the new president of world athletics body the IAAF on Wednesday, Sebastian Coe promised zero tolerance for drug cheats after previously blasting media revelations as a "declaration of war."

Media reports claimed that data from 12,000 blood tests between 2001 and 2012 had revealed an "extraordinary extent of cheating" and that more than 50 Olympic and world gold medals during that period could be tainted by drug use.

The allegations by the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD triggered lurid headlines likening athletics to cycling, whose dark history of doping scandals culminated in disgraced American Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

"There is a zero tolerance to abuse of doping in my sport," said Coe. "I will maintain that to the very highest level of vigilance."

As the vultures circle athletics before the world championships, the spectre of doping will thrust intense demands on the sport's new order, as well as its established heroes.

None more so than Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt, whose rivalry with track's pantomime villain Justin Gatlin in the 100 metres represents, to many, a battle between light and dark.

Amid the steady drip-drip of doping controversies in recent years, both Coe and his rival for the IAAF presidency, Sergey Bubka, promised a crackdown on drug cheats as they bid to replace Lamine Diack.

But the pressure on Bolt will be immense, with the six-times Olympic champion -- one of the most tested athletes in sport -- billed as the saviour of a sport in danger of slipping into a moral abyss.

Gatlin, twice banned for doping offences, is unbeaten over 100 metres since 2013 and recently won a race in Lausanne where no fewer than five of the seven runners had previously tested positive for banned substances.

The notorious 1988 Seoul Olympics final, infamous for Ben Johnson's steroid-fuelled dash to victory, featured six competitors tainted by drugs.

Three decades later, athletics is still fighting the scourge of doping with several high-profile athletes under the microscope, including Bolt's close friend, Briton Mo Farah, whose coach Alberto Salazar has been hit by allegations he gave his athletes performance-enhancing drugs.

Farah's training partner, fellow distance runner Galen Rupp, was one of those implicated, with Salazar accused of doping him with the anabolic steroid testosterone in 2002 when Rupp was a teenager.

- Dark old days -

Farah, the double London Olympic champion, was cleared of any wrongdoing after an investigation by British track and field officials.

But the sport's governing body is still putting out fires, last weekend denying claims it blocked a survey revealing a third of top athletes confessed to cheating.

Meanwhile, Russia has been hit by allegations of systematic drug abuse, evoking memories of the dark old days of sport in former Eastern Bloc countries and leading to calls that the country should be hit with a blanket ban.

Olympic 800 metres champion Maria Savinova's apparent confession in an undercover documentary that she had used the banned steroid oxandrolone came after a spate of failed tests before the 2012 London Games and subsequent bans for walk champions Valery Borchin, Sergei Kirdyapkin and Olga Kaniskina.

Kenya continues to investigate an alarming spike in doping cases in the country after more than 30 athletes failed tests in the past two years.

WADA recently admitted as many as 10 percent of athletes could be using performance-enhancing substance, though a tough-talking Coe trumpeted an independent anti-doping agency for track and field as part of his successful manifesto, with IAAF tests currently going through WADA.

Gatlin and Tyson Gay, who has also served a ban and was stripped of his sprint relay silver medal from the London Olympics, will come under intense scrutiny in Beijing.

Bolt, who admits to being fuelled by junk food, faces arguably his biggest challenge yet at the sharp edge of a public relations crisis which threatens the sport's credibility.
Source: AFP