Bolt’s historic fifth treble gold medal haul was unfortunately not enough to counter the mess that athletics became in 2015 with unsavoury revelations popping up one after the other. PHOTO: REUTERS
Bolt bagged an unprecedented fifth treble gold medal haul at a global championship in the Chinese capital in August, suitably in the same Bird’s Nest stadium where his career took off in in the 2008 Olympics.
But the towering Jamaican’s feats were overshadowed by revelations that threw track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF, into turmoil.
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At the same Beijing world champs where Bolt shone, former British double 1500m Olympic champions Sebastian Coe beat Sergey Bubka in a vote to take over from Lamine Diack as IAAF president.
No sooner was Coe installed than Diack was revealed to have accepted bribes worth up to €1 million to allow doped Russian athletes to compete. A ‘horror show’, in Coe’s words.
Coe, who was IAAF vice-president for eight years under Diack and had previously described the Senegalese as the sport’s ‘spiritual leader’, insisted he had had no inkling of corruption within his organisation.
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The IAAF also provisionally suspended athletics powerhouse Russia in November, and both RUSADA (Russian anti-doping agency) and Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory were banned over the bombshell WADA report alleging systematic state-sponsored doping.
The question remains whether Coe is the man to instigate change.
With links to some of the biggest scandals in modern sport, Coe nevertheless remained bullish when asked why people should believe that he is the right person to clean up athletics. “Have there been failures? Yes. Will we fix them? Absolutely. I’m absolutely focused on doing that. If we don’t do that, there are no tomorrows for my sport. This is the crossroads,” he said.
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A neutral observer can only hope that the likes of Bolt and American Ashton Eaton, who bettered his own decathlon world record at Beijing, will be there to help track and field through its darkest moment.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2015.
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