(ATR) The World Athletics body is seeking help from the Chinese Athletics Association to validate a letter written by Olympic gold medalist Wang Junxia claiming her coach forced athletes to take banned substances in the 1990’s.
If the letter is verified, Wang could be stripped of the gold she won in the 5,000m at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta as well as the two world records she holds in the 10,000m and 3,000m.
"If an athlete has admitted that, at some time prior to achieving a world record, [s]he had used or taken advantage of a substance or technique prohibited at that time, then, subject to the advice of the medical and anti-doping commission, such record will not continue to be regarded as a world record by the IAAF," the IAAF said in a statement released Friday, saying it was unaware of the situation until requests to comment came in from Chinese media outlets.
Wang wrote the letter to Chinese journalist Zhao Yu in 1995, alleging that coach Ma Junren routinely mistreated his team known as Ma’s Army and forced them to take performance enhancers, sometimes injecting the athletes himself.
"It's all true that Coach Ma had beaten, verbally abused and mistreated us for years," said the letter, dated March 28, 1995. "It's also true that he had coaxed or forced us into using large quantities of banned drugs."
Wang said that the abuse had brought the Chinese athletics team to "the brink of a complete collapse".
The letter would be inserted into chapter 14 of a 1998 book detailing the success of Coach Ma. However, the chapter was removed from the book by Chinese publishing authorities and not released until 2014 when officials believed the Chinese public could accept the scandal.
Chinese news agency Tencent Sports published a series of reports Wednesday that quoted the hidden chapter of the book extensively. The letter written by Wang also had the signatures of nine fellow teammates that were tired of the maltreatment.
"His crimes must be revealed because we don't want to see the same thing happen to the next generation," Wang writes in the letter.
Wang has yet to comment on the recent reports and denied ever taking banned substances in a 2008 interview with the AP. Coach Ma also has not responded but has claimed in the past he never gave athletes performance enhancers.
These latest reports add another doping scandal to what’s been a rough start for new IAAF president Sebastian Coe. After Coe was elected in August to replace Lamine Diack, a WADA Independent Commission report uncovered state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics.
Coe has pledged to increase anti-doping measures and funding for anti-doping programs in wake of the scandals.
Written by Kevin Nutley
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