Sydney Olympic Medals Resolution Coming, Says Diack

(ATR) The president of the world athletics federation promised Friday that the long-running uncertainty over the outcome of the 2000 Olympics women’s sprint titles originally won by Marion Jones will be resolved within weeks.

In 2007, Jones was stripped of her five Olympic medals, including the Sydney 100, 200 and 4x400m golds, following admissions by the American sprinter of drug use and her involvement in the BALCO doping scandal. The International Association of Athletics Federations retrospectively annulled all her results up to September 2000.

The status of the 100m result has been complicated because the runner-up behind Jones in Sydney was Katerina Thanou, the Greek who in 2004 was also banned for doping offenses.

Today, Lamine Diack told a press conference here in Berlin, ahead of the track and field world championships, that he has spoken to Pauline Davis, the runner-up in the Sydney 200 meters, “and I told her there would be more news by October.”

The IAAF and IOC are waiting for the outcome of a challenge through the Court for Arbitration in Sport over the redistribution of the medals for the Sydney women’s 4x400m relay.

Jacques Rogge, the President of the IOC who was also on the top table at the jointly-held press conference at Berlin’s Intercontinental Hotel, explained that the status of the Sydney Olympic results had been discussed this morning at a meeting between the IOC Executive Board and the IAAF’s Council.

“The IAAF legitimately wants this matter resolved as soon as possible,” Rogge said.

As well as waiting for the CAS ruling, Rogge said that the IOC and IAAF will use the opportunity to review all its information on Jones and the BALCO case. “We are going to speed up,” he promised.

False Start In IAAF Presidential Race?

In the week when the IAAF changed its rules on false starts, Diack fired the recall gun on the race to succeed him as president of the IAAF.

It had been widely anticipated that Diack, 76, from Senegal, who has been head of track and field’s world body since 1999, would not seek re-election at the IAAF’s next Congress, in Daegu, South Korea, in 2011.

Two athletics greats of the 1980s – former pole vaulter Sergey Bubka, of the Ukraine, and Britain’s two-time Olympic 1,500 meters champion Sebastian Coe – were reckoned to be front-runners to replace Diack. Both men, vice-presidents of the IAAF, were in the room when Diack said that he would consider standing for another four-year term from 2011.

“It’s possible, if I am in good shape,” said Diack, the father of 15 children. "Many people are asking me to do that, depending on my health," Diack said, potentially opening the door for an election campaign by adding, gnomically: "I will go if I have prepared some people to take over."

Since taking over as IAAF president 10 years ago following the death of Primo Nebiolo, Diack has never been opposed in an election. There has not been a contested election for the post of IAAF president since Nebiolo beat the incumbent, Dutchman Adriaan Paulen, in 1981.

IAAF Bans Ghana From Congress Over Political Interference

Rogge used the occasion to praise the IAAF’s stance against political interference in the running of sports federations.

The IAAF banned Ghana from attending this week’s Congress, after the country’s government appointed leading officials to its athletics federation. Ghana has since promised to hold free, unhindered elections to its national governing body within 30 days.

“We spoke about the autonomy of sports movement from ever more interference from governments,” Rogge said. “It has happened with FIFA in various countries, and it has happened with Ghana in athletics.

“But the IOC and the IAAF work together and we act together after communication.”

No Pre-Championship Blood Tests in Africa or Russia

The IAAF and IOC have both asked the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to simplify its procedures on blood profiling tests, and to increase the number of accredited laboratories capable of conducting such tests.

There have been no blood tests of athletes in Africa or Russia ahead of the world championships, which begin in Berlin Saturday because, according to Rogge, difficulties in storing and transporting samples.

Rogge said that tests may soon be able to detect the illegal use of transfusions of the athletes’ own blood (a technique to increase oxygen-carrying red cells), and to detect the use of blood boosting hormone EPO over a longer period. “But it is not a panacea,” Rogge said.

“Transporting the samples from Africa to the laboratories in Europe is difficult, a technical problem,” Rogge said. “But I am reassured by the fact that the IAAF has collected a large number of blood samples and they will follow-up on this.”

Berlin Spirit Of Owens and Long Invoked

Looking forward to the championships, Diack said that the IAAF would attempt to recreate some of the spirit of sportsmanship exhibited between Jesse Owens, the African American sprinter who won four Olympic gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler in Berlin’s Olympiastadion in 1936, and Luz Long, his Aryan German rival in the long jump.

In describing the events of 73 years ago, the IAAF’s African president chose to call Owens a “nigger”. Aides said that Diack did so in “an anti-Nazi way”.

Diack said: “We will never forget what happened here in 1936. Society here at that time was a little racist, yet Luz Long, a young, white, blond man jumped with this nigger”, going on to describe how the two athletes became firm friends, through sport. Long died on active service in 1943.

“Every participant, every spectator here this week will take this into consideration,” Diack said.

Marlene Dortch, the granddaughter of Jesse Owens, and Kai Long, son of Luz Long, will represent their families as they award the medals for the men’s long jump final on August 22, while the United States team in Berlin will wear special team kit carrying Owens’s initials.

“These championships provide a rare opportunity to honor the bond of international friendship formed between Owens and Long,” Diack said.

IAAF Increases Women On Its Council To Six

With gender equity the Olympic theme in Berlin, the IAAF has set the pace by deciding that from 2011, at least six members of its ruling council will be women.

“At our next election Congress in Daegu,” said Pierre Weiss, the IAAF general secretary, “we will have two more women on the IAAF council.

“We will not be increasing the numbers on the council, so this will mean that two men will have to come off.”

Cross-country’s Annual Championships Scrapped

And the sport’s oldest annual world championships – in cross-country running, first staged as an international race between the Home Countries and France in 1903 – will be scrapped after 2012.

The IAAF Congress voted overwhelmingly to move its world cross-country event to once every two years, rather than annually, as it had been staged for 106 years with the exception of the world wars.

The world body has grown weary of the event being a virtual benefit event for two or three countries from east Africa. Between them, Kenya and Ethiopia have dominated the senior men’s team title since 1981, collecting the lions’ share of the annual £200,000 prize fund from the IAAF.

Recently, few European nations have even bothered entering full teams at the world cross. The last time a European-born runner won the individual senior men’s title was Carlos Lopes, of Portugal, in 1985.

The IAAF is still actively considering applying to have cross-country running added to the program of the Winter Olympics. No decision will be taken before 2011, but Diack explained, “We want cross-country in the Winter Olympics. We don’t want to take the 10,000 meters or the steeplechase out of the program of the Summer Games.”

Written by Steven Downes