This will be the year known as the year of International Sporting Crises.
Athletics is the latest sport to be thrown under the scandal bus after a massive leak of blood tests revealed that a third of Medals at Olympics and World Championships from 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes with dubious results.
Amongst those Medals were 55 Gold Medals with results from 12,000 tests, divided between 5,000 athletes.
The data was leaked to the Sunday Times UK and German broadcaster ARD/WRD by a whistleblower at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) was “alarmed” by the size and the extent of these allegations and is investigating.
“These are wild allegations, wide allegations and we will check them out and have that done with the commission as quickly as possible,” Wada chief Craig Reedie told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
An independent commission is already investigating previous allegations of mass doping.
“I am very surprised by the numbers from the leak from the IAAF. I am sure they will want to look at it closely to determine the source,” Reedie said.
“It was the spread of the allegations that came from previous programmes (that surprised me). If you look at allegations on blood issues they are even wider. So that’s a concern. But I stress athletes are innocent until proven guilty.”
One of the world’s leading “anti-doping experts”, Robin Parisotto analyzed the data for the Sunday Times and said he was concerned.
“Never have I seen such an alarmingly abnormal set of blood values,” he said. “So many athletes appear to have doped with impunity, and it is damning that the IAAF appears to have idly sat by and let this happen.”
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