IAAF scrap secrecy rules in war on doping

Such is the corruption crisis that has engulfed the sport that this month's prestigious annual awards ceremony in Monaco has been cancelled. "Given the cloud that hangs over our association, this is clearly not the time for the global athletics family to be gathering in celebration of our sport," said Lord Coe.

The world body confirmed Papa Massata Diack, Valentin Balakhnichev, Alexei Melnikov, and Dr Dolle, have been charged with various alleged breaches of their code of ethics.

Dr Dolle, and Lamine Diack, who recently stood down after a 16-year reign as president, have this week also been charged with alleged corruption and aggravated money laundering in France, involving an alleged payment of more than one million euros to cover up doping offences by Russian athletes.

Dolle and Diack's legal adviser, Habib Cisse, face corruption charges in France.

Papa Massata Diack has already been obliged to stand down from his IAAF marketing post, amid allegations of soliciting millions in back-handers around Qatar's bid for the 2021 World Championships. Melnikov, a former Russia chief coach, has had more than 20 of his athletes, many of them Olympic champions, suspended for doping offences.

Former president, Diack, faces allegations that he was paid for delaying sanctions against Russian dope cheats (notably marathon runner Lydia Shobukova) exposed by the IAAF biological passport scheme.

Shobukova won the 2010 London marathon, and Chicago a record three successive times, earning more than $3m. She allegedly paid $600,000 to the All-Russia Athletics Federation to escape a ban. Balakhnichev, president of that federation since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and treasurer of the IAAF, resigned from both posts when the passports revealed a flood of doping positives.

The cases against the four named yesterday will be heard in London in December. By then Diack senior may be added to the list.

Doping has plagued the sport since Seoul in 1988. It was hailed as a watershed moment when Ben Johnson, the newly-crowned Olympic 100 metres champion, was convicted as a cheat. That was the death of the age of sporting innocence, and the obituaries were underlined when Canada's subsequent Dubin inquiry established steroids were rife.

A year earlier, British hammer record-holder Martin Girvan had testified to a UK inquiry that the late Andy Norman was orchestrating fake urine samples to allow athletes to avoid positive tests. Instead of being a watershed moment, with Norman removed from the sport, he became he became the most powerful figure in British athletics, and a consultant to the IAAF.

When drugs and doping equipment were discovered during the 1998 Tour de France, the "Festina Affair" led to the World Anti-Doping Agency being formed. Yet it could not prevent a drug-supercharged Lance Armstrong from winning seven Tour de France titles.

Then there was the Balco Affair which brought the downfall of British sprinter Dwain Chambers and icons such as Marion Jones and world 100m record holder Tim Montgomery.

Nobody will listen with more rapt attention than Lord Coe when an independent report commissioned by WADA is unveiled on Monday in Geneva.

It has been chaired by the man who launched the agency, Richard Pound.

IAAF staff seem to have been appallingly betrayed by their leader. If the president of a global sports federation and his lieutenants were involved in criminal extortion of money from athletes, making positive dope tests disappear, then it must be asked - how many other athletes have been involved? Or perhaps even blackmailed?

How come so many other athletes have been outed? Could they not pay?

This has the potential to dwarf Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, and all the others. If guilty, these officials should never be allowed near sport again.

You can be sure Pound's report will be comprehensive and forensic. He was the Canadian Olympic team's lawyer in 1988, the man detailed to defend Johnson. Before doing so, he dragged him into the privacy of a toilet, glared into his jaundiced eyes, and demanded to know the truth. Johnson denied cheating.

The affair almost certainly cost Pound any chance of becoming IOC president. Little wonder he hates dopers with a passion. He subsequently claimed Samaranch tried to sweep doping under the carpet: "There was no money available for research and Samaranch wasn't interested in using the Olympic leverage against the international federations to make them do their job."

WADA chairman Sir Craig Reedie, who lives in Bridge of Weir, said last night that he could not comment before Pound's report is public. The remit of their independent commission was solely to investigate Russian breaches of the anti-doping code. Criminal activity would have to be passed via Interpol to the French police.

The sport itself has exposed this, rather than whistle-blowers. Johnson was outed because officials feared the Olympic movement might bury his positive test. Fear of a cover-up is also, I believe, why Linford Christie's 100-times the legal limit dope test was revealed to me and exposed in The Herald.

Yet those tempted to consider this latest doping scandal a watershed might care to recall East Germans Manfred Ewald and Manfred Hoeppner. They orchestrated their country's infamous doping regime. Olympic president, Samaranch, bestowed the IOC's highest honour on Ewald who led the East German Sports Federation for 27 years. He was the country's former sports minister and president of the DDR Olympic committee for 17. Dr Hoeppner was in charge of the programme itself. As a member of the IOC medical commission he knew exactly what was being tested for, how, and when. Both were ultimately convicted for their roles in the national doping campaign. For "intentional bodily harm of athletes, including minors'' in which athletes died, and women felt forced to change their sex, the pair were sentenced to 22 and 18 months probation respectively.

Don't bet on any convictions from the latest scandal leading to serious jail time.