French Investigate Olympic Voting

French prosecutors have widened their investigation into corruption in athletics to include the bidding and voting processes for the hosting of the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.

Lamine Diack, the former president of world governing body the IAAF, is already being investigated by French authorities.

He was arrested last year on corruption and money laundering charges, over allegations he took payments for deferring sanctions against Russian drugs cheats.

Confirming the investigation was being widened, an official from the prosecutor's office said: "We are looking at these elements, but at this stage it is a question of verification. Nothing has been proved."

Tokyo, which will host the 2020 Olympics, defended the voting process when it came under scrutiny in January.

Rio 2016 organisers said on Tuesday that the city "won the right to host the Games because it had the best project".

"The difference in the votes, 66 to 32 against Madrid, excludes any possibility of an election that could have been rigged," communications director Mario Andrada said.

Diack, 82, was head of the International Association of Athletics Federations for 16 years until he stepped down last August.

He resigned as an honorary member of the IOC in November - a day after being provisionally suspended by the organisation following the start of the French investigation.

In December, a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report into alleged IAAF corruption claimed Diack had been prepared to sell his vote to decide on the host city for the 2020 Games in exchange for sponsorship of IAAF events.

Diack's son Papa Massata, who was employed by his father as a marketing consultant for the IAAF, is also under investigation, and a warrant for his arrest has been issued by Interpol.

Last month, Wada investigators called for a follow-up inquiry into all World Championships awarded by the IAAF for 2009-2019 after finding evidence of possible wrongdoing.

Diack Jr has been banned for life by the IAAF but told the BBC in December he and his father were innocent of the claims against them.

Prosecutors are now looking into whether the alleged corruption could have extended to vote-rigging.

The Guardian claimed last year that - according to leaked emails - Diack Jr requested a payment of $5m from Doha in 2011, shortly before a decision was made about the city's unsuccessful bid for the 2017 World Championships. The Doha bid denies any wrongdoing.

In January, the newspaper reported he apparently arranged for "parcels" to be delivered to six IOC members in 2008, when Qatar was bidding for the 2016 Olympics, which will be hosted by Rio.

An IOC spokesman said the organisation had been in close contact with French prosecutors since the beginning of this investigation.

He added: "The IOC's chief ethics and compliance officer had already asked for the IOC to be fully informed in a timely manner of all issues that may refer to Olympic matters and has already applied to become a party to the investigations led by the French judicial authorities."

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Coe Ready to Ban Kenya from Rio

Sebastian Coe is ready to ban Kenya’s track and field team from the Olympic Games in Rio if the country’s athletics federation is declared non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency code.

Kenya last week missed a deadline to prove to Wada it was doing enough to combat doping and the IAAF president has confirmed he will impose serious sanctions on any nation guilty of attempting to cover up drug-taking.

“We know a disproportionate amount of reputational damage is caused by a relatively few countries and we have to be much more proactive,” Lord Coe told BT Sport’s The Clare Balding Show. “Yes, if it means pulling them out of world championships or Olympic Games then we will have to do that.

“I know the World Anti-Doping Agency has looked very closely at the Kenyan National Anti-Doping Agency. We, of course, monitor that through the IAAF, so that work is ongoing.”

Russia, banned from athletics in November after being found guilty of state-sponsored doping, aims to prove it has changed its ways before Rio. The scandal has engulfed the whole sport of athletics, with Coe admitting his reputation may now be on the line.

“When you look at the horror show that has unfolded in the last six months, year or so, the question we all have to ask ourselves – and I’m not immune from that, I ask myself this every day – is how on earth did we get to this position?

“The guiding principle for me is to get the right people with the right motives in the sport, and by a distance they are there. We’ve just got to elevate them now.”

Nestlé and Adidas have attempted to sever their sponsorship ties with the IAAF, which has vowed to keep the companies on board.

“They want to know what changes I am prepared to make,” Coe said. “Am I serious about that? Yes, I am. Is it the only thing I’m focused on? Yes. Will we get those in place as quickly as we can? Yes, we will. But they have boards of shareholders, they have corporate governances themselves, so they are asking the right questions and a large part of my waking hours is flying around the world explaining to them why it is my intention to never return to this again.”

Wilson Kipsang has urged Kenya’s government to fend off the threat of an Olympics ban by bolstering the fight against doping. The president of the Professional Athletes Association of Kenya was among 80 athletes who met in Eldoret on Wednesday to formulate an appeal to Kenya’s government to fast-track legislation criminalising doping.

“If we are banned, Kenya will never be the same again,” the former marathon world record holder said. “This is a country which has made its name as an athletics giant. We have done well in the Olympic and world championships and therefore, we should not miss out complying with the doping directives.

“Since the formation of Adak [the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya], the agency has never been formalised and most importantly given powers to deal with doping. It also needs legislative will from government.”

Kip Keino, the former Olympic gold medallist who heads Kenya’s Olympic committee, echoed Kipsang’s sentiments.

“It is for the government to act and see what they can do regarding this matter,” he said. “This is the IAAF ethics commission’s work. They reckon we are too slow. We will do our best. We will put our heads together with the government and Adak and AK [Athletics Kenya]. But government must do the donkey work. It must take the draft bill to cabinet and be enacted. We are too slow.”

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Adidas End IAAF Sponsorship

The German sportswear company signed an 11-year agreement with the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2008 reported to be worth around £23m. But the BBC reported that the ongoing doping and corruption scandal has prompted Adidas to inform the IAAF that it will be pulling out of the deal. Neither Adidas nor the IAAF has made any comment.

According to the report, the move will result in tens of millions of dollars in lost income. The BBC claims the IAAF was told Adidas was considering ending its relationship with them in November after the publication of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) Independent Commission’s first report, which detailed claims of “state sponsored doping” within Russia.

The BBC, citing anonymous sources, said the sponsorship deal, signed in November 2008, was worth around $8m (£5.61m) per year.

The IAAF said it was in close contact will all its sponsors and partners as it embarked on reform.

Adidas is one of the IAAF’s “Official Partners” along with Canon, Toyota, Seiko, TDK, TBS and Mondo.

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IAAF Scandal Worse than FIFA - Johnson

Reuters

The corruption scandal plaguing athletics is worse than the one faced by football, says four-time Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson.

Three senior IAAF officials were banned for life for alleged doping breaches.

And Russia is currently banned from all athletics competitions following accusations of widespread doping.

Asked how the scandal facing athletics compared to that of Fifa, Johnson told the BBC: "If you think about the victims, it is absolutely worse."

Fifa, the body that governs world football, is also in crisis following a series of damaging corruption claims.

Its president, Sepp Blatter, has been banned for eight years for breaching ethics rules.

In an interview with Mishal Husain, Johnson said that those athletes cheated out of medals by dopers "never had the opportunity to stand on the podium - and they should have".

However, he stopped short of backing an Olympic ban for Russian athletes later this year.

"Do you ban an entire country that ostensibly could include clean athletes, from participating in Rio?" asked the American, who still holds the world and Olympic records for the 400m.

"That is a very difficult decision to make."

Johnson was also cool on the idea, floated by chairman of UK Athletics Ed Warner, of resetting all world records so athletics could start afresh with a level playing field.

"It doesn't make sense to me how a reset of all the world records is going to deal with the issue of people cheating," Johnson said.

"It doesn't create a clean competition and that does not deter anyone from cheating."

But he does believe the International Association of Athletics Federations must be "completely restructured".

"It is the governing body - and the very structure of the governing body - that has allowed this type of corruption," he said.

A report by the World Anti-Doping Agency's independent commission was scathing of former IAAF president Lamine Diack, whose 16-year reign came to an end in August 2015 when he was replaced by Lord Coe.

It claimed that "corruption was embedded" in the organisation and said it could not be ignored or dismissed as attributable to "the odd renegade acting on his own".

It concluded: "The IAAF allowed the conduct to occur and must accept its responsibility."

Johnson said he hoped the crisis would be the catalyst for "a fresh look" at all the problems facing athletics and would help rebuild trust with fans.

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IAAF Diack Admits Russian Money

The former IAAF president Lamine Diack has admitted to police that he asked Russia for €1.5m to run a political campaign in his native Senegal, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

France’s national office for financial prosecutions is investigating Diack, who stepped down as IAAF president in August when he was succeeded by Sebastian Coe.

Police say he is suspected of taking the money to cover up positive drugs tests by Russian athletes.

Le Monde says it has obtained transcripts of Diack’s interviews with police in which he admits to having spoken with the former Russian athletics federation president and IAAF treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev about needing money. Diack wanted to finance opposition against Senegal’s then-president Abdoulaye Wade.

The transcript reported by Le Monde said: “I told him that to win the elections, I needed about €1.5m. He said to me: ‘We’ll try to find it, no problem.’

“At that time there was these problems of suspending Russian athletes a few months ahead of the world championships in Russia. We came to an agreement. Russia paid. Balakhnichev organised all of that.”

Balakhnichev denied to Le Monde that he had had such a conversation with Diack.

On Friday, the IAAF ethics commission concluded a three-day hearing into Balakhnichev, Diack’s son Papa Massata Diack, the former IAAF anti-doping director Gabriel Dollé and the Russian federation’s former chief coach for long-distance athletes, Alexei Melnikov.

The officials faced disciplinary hearings on charges that they covered up doping offences. All four are charged with various breaches of the IAAF’s code of ethics and could face lifetime bans with a decision expected in early January.

The IAAF charges involve the Russian runner Liliya Shobukhova, the former London marathon winner who turned whistleblower for the World Anti-Doping Agency this year, and money she paid to have her doping violations covered up.

According to testimony she has given, Shobukhova paid more than $600,000 (£435,000) for violations to be covered up so that she was not suspended.

The IAAF has banned Russia from international competition after a report by Wada’s independent commission, headed by Dick Pound, who is due to release the second part of his findings on 14 January.

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Top Managers of Rusada Step Down

All the top managers of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) have stepped down, the R-Sport news agency reported on Thursday, in the latest steps to clean up Russian athletics to avoid missing next year’s Olympics.

Russia was suspended from international athletics last month after a special commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency exposed widespread state-sponsored cheating and corruption. It is working to lift the ban in time for its athletes to compete at the Rio Games next August.

“It was decided at a meeting attended by the heads of Rusada that the general director, Ramil Khabriev, should be relieved of his position,” R-Sport quoted Natalia Zhelanova, an adviser to the sports minister, as saying.

She said “all the high-level management” of the agency was stepping down.

Anna Antseliovich, head of Rusada’s Result Management and Investigation Department, has been named as the acting general director of the organisation.

Since Soviet times, Russia has invested heavily to ensure success at the Olympic Games and earn itself the status of sporting superpower, so banishment from Rio would be a severe blow to its prestige.

The sport’s world governing body, the IAAF, said last week that Russia could only be reinstated to international competition if it complied with a detailed ‘roadmap’.

Among the requirements were that Russia demonstrate that none of its sporting officials have any prior links to doping, and that Rusada should be able to operate “effectively and without interference”.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia was against doping in sport, and people who used it must be punished.

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Olympic Legends - Dave Wottle

Known as much for his omnipresent golf hat as his strong finishing kick, Dave Wottle used the 1972 Olympics to gain national celebrity while still a student at Bowling Green. 

Born on August 7, 1950 in Canton, Wottle won a state title at Lincoln High School, then burst onto the local and national track scene at Bowling Green in 1970, finishing second in the mile at the NCAA Track and Field Championships. While injuries kept him out of the 1971 season, Wottle had a career year in 1972, just in time for the Olympics in Munich, Germany. 

After winning the 1500m title at the NCAA Championships, Wottle also won the 800m race at the AAU Championships. Then, on July 1, 1972 at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, Wottle ran the 800 meters in 1:44.3, tying the World Record, and breaking the six-year old American record in the process. The next two months were ones that would change anyone's life. On July 15, he got married, and about six weeks later was in Munich for the Olympic Games. 

The Games started with their usual fanfare, and Wottle had everyone's attention as he took to the track for the 800m race. He started slowly, falling behind the pack, momentarily changing his goal from winning the race to simply saving face. Determined, Wottle caught up to the pack, and changed his goals for the race again. 

"When I passed the first Kenyan (one of the front-runners), I quickly reassessed my goals and decided to go for a silver medal," he wrote on the Rhodes College website, where he currently serves as Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. 

With another Kenyan and a Russian ahead of him, the "guy in the hat" put on a kick that pushed him to Olympic gold. He crossed the finish line three-hundredths of a second ahead of Russian Yewgeniy Arzhanov, and not much more than a tenth of a second ahead of Kenyan Mike Boit, who took the bronze. With one medal secured, Wottle was preparing for the 1500m race, when the Olympic spirit was shattered. 

On September 5, just six days into the games, eight Arab commandos raided the athlete's village in Munich, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine others hostage. The next morning, all nine hostages were killed in a shootout between the terrorists and police at the German airport. 

"We were fairly close by," Wottle remembered. "I roomed with Frank Shorter. Our housing facility was only about 100 yards away from the residence hall where the incident occurred. We heard a loud noise, which happened to be the first burst of gunfire, when they first captured the Israeli athletes. But you know it's like one of those sounds you always hear in the middle of the night, a car backfiring or something, like a loud burst - you recognize it, but you don't think much of it." (From USOlympicTeam.com) 

After a day of mourning, and a memorial service at the main Olympic stadium, the Games continued. Wottle, however, was eliminated from competition in the semifinals of the 1500 meters, and would not have a chance at another medal. 

He would return to BG for the 1973 track season, and again was a force at the NCAA Championships. Not in the 800 meters in which he held the world record (until May 27 of that year, when fellow American Rich Wolhuter would eclipse his mark by three-tenths of a second), but in the mile, where he closed out his collegiate career with another first place finish. 

All told in his collegiate career, he would win the two NCAA outdoor titles, scoring in another, win three NCAA indoor events, and scored in an AAU outdoor event in addition to his win in the 800m in the 1972 AAU Championships. In the Mid-American Conference, he won six titles in track, one in cross country, and also won an All-Ohio cross country meet and scoring in an NCAA cross country meet. By the time he left Bowling Green, he had set 13 Ohio college records. 

Inducted into the Ohio Track Hall of Fame in 1974, and the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1982 (incidentally, five years after his famous hat was "inducted"), Wottle coached track and cross country at Walsh and Bethany colleges for six years, and is currently employed at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

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