RENEE ANNE SHIRLEY, the whistleblower who exposed Jamaica’s negligible levels of dope testing in the lead-up to the London Olympics, believes that Lord Sebastian Coe is not the right man to rescue athletics from the scandal in which the sport is currently engulfed.

Dick Pound’s independent report, which was released on Monday, accused Russia of “state-sponsored doping” and Coe, who was elected President of athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, in August has the responsibility of dealing with the catastrophic fall-out which has ensued. Coe has pledged to fix these failures and restore trust in the sport but Shirley, the former Executive Director of the Jamaican Anti-Doping Commission, Jadco, remains unconvinced that he is the most suitable individual to restore the reputation of athletics.

“Coe has dug himself into a hole in recent months,” she told Herald Sport. “He’s had his head in the sand.” Coe’s election as President of the IAAF followed a long involvement with the governing body having been vice-president since 2007. It is this fact particularly that sways Shirley’s opinion.

“Coe was part of the system for seven years before he became President so for him to say that he was totally ignorant to everything when the rumours were swirling around is always going to be hard to believe,” she says. “He now has a very short time to try and salvage this. But if he continues speaking the way he is speaking right now then I don’t think he’s the right person to lead athletics through this. He would really need to do a radical re-shift of his stance and I just don’t know if that’s going to happen. Maybe he just didn’t pay attention in previous years but really? I don’t think so.”

Shirley has dedicated many years to fighting doping in sport and is one of the most respected figures in the field. It is this experience that ensured Pound’s findings did not shock her. “I wasn’t really surprised at WADA’s report because, a lot of it, we already knew,” she says. “Ever since 2013 when the Mail on Sunday reported on this issue, we had an idea of the corruption within the Russian system relating to anti-doping tests and results. So basically, what WADA’s report has done is confirm the size and severity of the problem. I believe that suspending Russia from competition is the right thing to do.”

One of Shirley’s primary concerns in the wake of Pound’s report is that all focus will be trained on Russia with everyone else emerging relatively unscathed. While the doping issue within Russia is, clearly, a pressing problem for the sport, they are not, believes the Jamaican, the only ones guilty of wrongdoing. “My biggest concern is that the focus is going to be totally on Russia and not the IAAF,” she says. “Yes, Russia has been engaging in systemic doping but I don’t think they’re the only problem.”

Shirley is clear that she believes that the IAAF is must also get its house in order. Lamine Diack, Coe’s predecessor as president, is under investigation by French police for accepting money from the Russian Athletics Federation to cover up positive dope tests and is no longer involved with the IAAF but this does not mean that the problem is solved. “I think this whole issue is wider spread than just a few rogue individuals within the IAAF,” says Shirley.

“I keep trying to remind everybody that the athlete is not the responsibility of the national anti-doping federation, they are the responsibility of the [global] federation. More time must be spent looking at the interaction of the federations and there has to be questions asked about what they have been doing. I don’t think that this is going to end with just a few people bribing some officials- I think that there is a systemic problem within the sport and so we need to look at the wider picture.”

Shirley believes that whoever gave blood data to Hajo Seppelt, the German journalist who lifted the lid on Russia’s doping indiscretions, may be targeted.

Russian minister of sport, Vitaly Mutko, has described the whistleblowers as "disgusting" but they are, of course, vital in uncovering information. Pound’s report suggested that WADA needs to develop a whistleblower assistance and protection programme to encourage such action but Shirley knows only too well the impact on one’s life of publicising information that many do not want to hear. Shirley was branded a “Judas” and a “traitor” when she disclosed the lack of out-of-competition drug testing in her home country in the run up to London 2012 and was forced to go into hiding such was the vitriol directed towards her.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re British, Jamaican, Russian, whatever – no federation wants to hear anything bad about their sport,” she says. “I wasn’t alone in what I did but it’s very hard to be a whistle-blower and it impacts your life and the lives of your family. Despite that, I don’t regret anything I did or said. I was willing to take the blows – I knew it was going to come with the territory but it has been very difficult to deal with the aftermath.”

Shirley has issued a public message to Coe that she is willing to be part of an independent team digging into the activities of the IAAF Anti-Doping Department. Will the call come? Only time will tell…