What is the point of sport? The recent death of Sir Roger Bannister, who ran the world’s first four-minute mile in 1954 while he was a medical student training in his time off, suggested one answer. The publication two days later of a devastating report into doping in cycling and athletics by a parliamentary select committee suggests a rather different one. Sebastian Coe, a Conservative peer who had held, as a professional, the world mile record that had once been Bannister’s, gave a dismal showing in his testimony about his time in the International Association of Athletics Federations. Before becoming president Lord Coe was vice-president for eight years, a period in which one of the then president’s sons was, the IAAF said, taking bribes to expunge the records of failed drug tests on Russian athletes. He told the committee that he was aware only in the vaguest terms of suspicions about the organised, industrial-scale doping of Russian athletes, and the possible involvement of the president. Later an email came to light showing him forwarding detailed allegations from a whistleblower to the head of the Federation’s ethics committee (a body that does in fact exist) although he says he never read them. The committee observed that his account of his own incuriosity about these allegations “stretches credibility”. It further described his reason for not publishing a scientific study into the prevalence of doping in athletics as “frankly risible”.
Source :- theguardian
No comments:
Post a Comment