LYNSEY SHARP insists there is little confidence left in the IAAF and has called for countries guilty of harbouring a doping culture to be hammered in a bid to clean up the shattered image of track and field.

An independent commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will release a report into cover-ups and money-laundering at 2pm on Monday in Geneva, which, according to co-author Richard McLaren, will show “a whole different scale of corruption”.

The former IAAF president, Lamine Diack, is under investigation by French prosecutors over allegations he extorted money from Russian athletes to cover up positive drug tests with one newspaper report stating that medallists from the London 2012 Olympic Games are among those under suspicion.

Sharp was beaten into second place in the final of the 800 metres of the 2012 European Championships in Helsinki by Yelena Arzhakova only to be awarded the gold medal after the Russian was found to have had an abnormal haemoglobin profile in her biological passport.

Sharp revealed afterwards that she considered quitting over the level of drug abuse in athletics and, although she does believe the current IAAF president, Lord Coe, will do his utmost to rebuild the sport from within, she hopes the explosive revelations expected in the WADA report will be the real catalyst for change.

“I think everyone would say that perhaps confidence is low at the moment,” said the 25-year-old silver medallist from last summer’s Commonwealth Games.

“I do have huge faith in Seb (Coe) and he has shown how seriously he is taking it. It is an issue that cannot be swept under the carpet. It is so big and so public now that I hope we will get to the bottom of it and start to clean out the sport.

“I would never point the finger at people, but I do think athletes always have suspicions. There have certainly been countries who have a bit of a track record and I do think it is perhaps time to punish those countries.

“As Seb has pointed out, it is a generational thing. We need to change views and show people that it is possible to reach the top clean.

“It is partly that, but I am not sure whether some countries will ever change because it is so deep-rooted in some countries. Perhaps they will always go out of their way to do things by illegal means in order to get medals at major championships.”

Worryingly, the attitude within athletics has been one of complete surprise over the allegations levelled at Diack.

Coe spent seven years as vice-president to the Senegalese official and insists there was no whiff of corruption around him whatsoever with last week’s revelations coming out of the blue.

“That was the first I had heard of them and I think that is almost certainly the case for virtually everybody in our sport,” said Coe in an interview with BBC Radio Five’s Sportsweek programme.

Sharp, however, has been less surprised by the incredible events of the past few days.

“It is very disappointing and it makes me very sad to hear this,” she said. “I am not that surprised.

“We have heard things over the last couple of years about our sport and, although this is massive and much bigger than anything else we have heard before, it just seems another part of the whole thing.

“It is a huge issue that needs addressing.”

Coe concedes that it will now take an incredible amount of work to restore any degree of faith in his organisation and the sport in general.

“These are dark days for our sport, but I am more determined than ever to rebuild the trust in our sport,” he said. “The day after I got elected (at the IAAF), I started a massive review.

“In the light of the allegations made, that review has been accelerated and I am determined to rebuild the sport, but it is a long road to redemption.”

Coe would not be drawn on suggestions that countries other than Russia may be named in today’s report.

“Clearly, we are going to have to wait for the WADA report,” said Coe. “It will be interesting to see where that scope is. We are taking a disproportionate amount of damage from a relatively small number of nations.”