Olympic legend Seb Coe says doping claims a ‘declaration of war’ on athletics

Olympic legend Sebastian Coe said the sport felt angry and betrayed over accusations it failed to investigate hundreds of “suspicious” drug test results. A day after the IAAF hit back at last weekend’s allegations by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper and Germany’s ARD/WDR broadcaster, Coe made an impassioned defence of track and field, telling the BBC the claims were “a declaration of war” on the sport. Coe, a former double Olympic champion, is in the running to become the next president of the world governing body of athletics.

That in some way we sit on our hands, at best, and at worst are complicit in a cover up, that is just not borne out by anything we have done as a sport in the past 15 years.

Lord Sebastian Coe

The two news organisations making the claims said they had obtained secret test data from the vaults of the IAAF, supplied by a whistleblower disgusted by the extent of doping in track and field. The reports said the tests indicated as many as 800 athletes supplied suspect blood tests between 2001 and 2012, raising new questions about the sport just weeks before the world championships in Beijing. "What has angered me and angered our sport is the betrayal that we are doing absolutely nothing when we have led the way on this and have consistently done so,“ Coe said.

I don’t think anyone should underestimate the anger which is felt in our sport in the betrayal of the last few days of our sport.

Lord Coe

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