|
IAAF president Sebastian Coe says he has been misrepresented after a parliamentary select committee report accused him of misleading a doping inquiry. He insisted on Tuesday the digital, culture, media and sport group's recently-published account had not damaged his reputation, or that of track and field, with criticism of evidence he gave to members of parliament in December 2015. "No [it has not]," he told a news conference in Birmingham. "I can't account for answers that I gave to that select committee session which have been attached to entirely different questions, but that will be the response, of course, that we make to the select committee." The criticism centred on information sent to Coe about Russian marathoner Liliya Shobukhova being extorted to have a positive doping test covered up by IAAF officials, so she could compete in the 2012 London Olympics. Coe, however, always maintained he did not read an email sent him by former London Marathon director Dave Bedford -- which he forwarded to the governing body's ethics commission while he was an IAAF vice-president -- that was central to the committee's criticism. After an IAAF council meeting in which the possibility of expelling Russia from the federation for anti-doping problems was discussed, Coe was asked whether he wished, with hindsight, he had paid more attention at the time. "If you don't actually believe that I don't have a computer, and that I don't sit pouring over emails all day and that I don't open attachments then probably there is not a great deal more I can say on this subject," he said. The IAAF president was also asked about the level of trust in the sport, given British 1500m star Laura Muir's reported refusal to speak with world indoor champion Genzebe Dibaba because of the Ethiopian's coaching connections. But having earlier insisted athletics was "strong" and that he wanted to "look forward, not back", he said of the Muir-Dibaba situation: "There's nothing new about those relationships. Athletes feel very very strongly about all sorts of things. "What I would really strongly suggest is if anybody has any substantive evidence about anything they'd like to take further then the Athletics Integrity Unit, the Athlete's Commission - we now have systems and structures in place to receive this kind of information."
|
