On the Scene: IAAF Considers Four Year Drugs Ban

(ATR) An IAAF vote Thursday in Moscow could mark the first step toward re-imposing a four-year ban on drug cheats in athletics.

With the sport reeling from recent high-profile doping positives, some IAAF officials are clamoring for an end of the two-year ban, which they adopted to stay in line with the World Anti-Doping Agency and its other constituents.

"I feel in retrospect, and personally I felt it at the time, that we caved," IAAF Council member Abby Hoffman of Canada tells Around the Rings. She says there should have been an allowance for diversity of penalties.

"I think we frankly wasted a lot of time where athletes got the idea that a two-year ban was a cost of doing business and they knew that they could come back."

The vote will determine if the membership gives the IAAF Council the mandate to make the decision on approving the new World Anti-Doping Agency code in Johannesburg in November. If WADA stays with a two-year suspension, the IAAF could change its sanction to a four-year ban.

Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain, a member of the IAAF athletes commission and the fastest female marathoner in history, said a four-year ban isn’t enough for her taste.

"Unfortunately, legally it can’t be lifetime bans," says Radcliffe. She said "risks must outweigh benefits" and that blood passport systems should be set up from the junior/youth level.

The courts ruled that Great Britain could not ban athletes for their lifetime.

At the WADA Congress in November, "The four-year ban is not a slam dunk," Hoffman says.

Other federations, particularly those with a large professional component "don’t want to expose their athletes to outright, unequivocal four-year bans."

She adds that the IAAF should increase the ban regardless, but that "intentionality" should be taken into account.

"If other international sport bodies don’t want tougher sanctions, we need to be sure space is carved out for athletics to impose the ban our athletes and our members want.

"We need to make that stick this time, even if it means going down a bit of an independent road for athletics."

In a breakout session of the first annual IAAF Forum at the Crowne Plaza, Radcliffe said one of the recommendations is that entourage members should be banned and sanctioned when they are involved in cheating.

"Athletics needs to continue leading the fight and showing that our sport is a beautiful sport and needs to be protected," she says.

Essar Gabriel, the IAAF’s general secretary, added that the federation has always been at the forefront of the fight against doping. "For us, it’s back to the future. Hopefully the mandate tomorrow will be given to the Council."

Other votes scheduled on Thursday include a motion to separate women’s road racing records into two distinct groups: races with men in the field and all-female races.

Changing Qualifications

The IAAF has accepted a new approach to World Championships entry standards that calls for a fixed number of athletes per event, a single standard per event – with a target 75 percent of the total. However, existing qualification elements remain generally unchanged.

These new standards will be effective for the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, and possibly extended to Junior and Youth Championships. Area qualification is another option for the future.

The IAAF also wants to keep the number of athletes at 2,000.

"How to do that is go for tougher qualification standards, then complete the list up to the level we need," Gabriel says. "The idea is to get the same results, but in a more processed manner and to insure we get where we want without compromising universality."

Frank Fredericks, Olympic silver medalist and chair of the athletes commission, gave the example of an athlete arriving at midnight and finding no bed because organizers didn’t know he was coming.

"It’s not fair to organizers; it’s not fair to athletes," he says.

However, Hoffman says the downside is an athlete who believes he or she has qualified for the World Championships or Olympic Games because of their ranking, only to be knocked out before the deadline.

That could keep some athletes continuing to compete when they should be tapering. If they keep their berth, "they show up at the event and are dead because they put all their energy into qualifying."

First Forum a Success

Gabriel tells ATR that the first IAAF Forum has been a "tremendous success judging by the rounds of applause, the fantastic interaction, which was much higher than we thought and some sessions going a bit on the late side."

He credits President Lamine Diack and the Council, noting that Diack wanted more of an exchange of ideas at the Congress instead of just reports and voting.

"What was really surprising is the hunger that you could feel of the member delegations to take the floor and to speak their minds," Gabriel says. "The baton was offered to them and they jumped at it."

Speakers included Jean-Luc Moner-Banet, President of the World Lottery Association, who helped address the problem of betting in sports, and Pere Miro, the director of Olympic Solidarity. "We knew that the speakers, the panels which we have assembled set a very high level, and they delivered even more," Gabriel says.

He also introduced the 2013-2016 Strategic Plan, outlining the IAAF's vision, mission and objectives. The vision centers on the values of universality, leadership, unity, excellence, integrity and solidarity. The objectives include improving the efficiency of governance, creating a "coherent, hierarchical, sustainable and profitable circuit of one-day meetings," putting an emphasis on the social responsibility of athletics and strengthening the leading role of athletics in the international development of sport.

Written and reported in Moscow by Karen Rosen.