Top IAAF official claims stories on "150 athletes with suspicious blood values" are "misleading", from Inside the Games

Mike Rowbottom, a very well respected sports journalist, wrote a piece for InsidetheGames.biz today. His feature was on Nick Davies, a highly respected IAAF spokesperson, who noted that the story about 150 athletes with suspicious blood readings was not only misleading, but downright ethical.

Nick Davies goes on to note that, as most know, one blood reading does not a failed test make. In order to develop an athlete biological passport, one must get blood readings over an extended period of time. One reading is not going to tell much, except that several more need to be done in order to draw any conclusions.

We applaud Mike Rowbottom for writing the story and for IAAF’s Nick Davies for pointing out the obvious, but the obvious has been spreading like wild fire around athletics fans. In the feeding frenzy to find all things wrong with athletics, athletes’ rights can not be flushed down the proverbial drain.

As we have always said, it is important to see both sides of the discussion.

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Top IAAF official claims stories on “150 athletes with suspicious blood values” are “misleading”, 11 December 2014

By Mike Rowbottom

Nick Davies, deputy general secretary of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), has described media stories alleging that 150 athletes, including several Olympic champions, had suspicious blood values between but were not subject to proper target testing as “misleading” and “unethical”.

T
he allegations surfaced following the third instalment of the German broadcaster ARD’s investigation on doping in athletics.

Previous programmes had made claims about systemic corruption within Russian athletics which is now the subject of investigation by the IAAF Ethics Commission and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In a letter to the American website, LetsRun.com, Davies, a highly respected figure in the sport and its official spokesman, acknowledges the first two installments as being “very useful”, in that they uncovered evidence which can be used “to investigate alleged infractions and perhaps end up with concrete sanctions.”

But the third episode, which claimed that a number of athletes – including many from Russia as well as others from Kenya, Germany, Spain, Morocco and one well known Briton – had allegedly produced abnormal blood values between 2006 and 2008, was strongly criticised by Davies.

Russian athletes,pictured celebrating victory in last year’s European Athletics Team Championships, are under scrutiny after doping allegations aired in a German documentary Â©Getty Images

“I was extremely shocked to note in the third episode of the documentary, to see use of selected information by what was named as a ‘former member of the IAAF Medical Commission’ to imply, completely unfairly, that 150 athletes had suspicious blood values and were NOT subject to proper targeted testing afterwards,” Davies writes.

“Not only am I bothered, from an ethical standpoint, that this PARTIAL and misleading information has been stolen from the IAAF Anti-dping department, since it contains highly sensitive and private data of a personal nature, but that the list of names has somehow been ‘seen’ by other media attending the IOC (International Olympic Committee) session in Monaco, who have followed up with sensationalist articles about said list and what it represents.

“As any half educated fan of athletics who has an interest in the science of anti-doping should know, a single reading in a longitudinal study of blood values in itself is worthless as evidence of doping, but is used as a MARKER.

“Athletes with a ‘red flag’ reading may well be guilty of doping, but equally (and we can prove it in the majority of names on this list) they may be innocent – which is why this information should always have remained locked up in the safe of the anti-doping department in Monaco.

“In my opinion, and I reserve the right to respond myself to the IAAF Ethics Commission, a number of media have reacted in an unethical manner with the intention to cause unfair reputational damage to the IAAF Anti-doping department and the reputation of athletes who have been carefully followed as the result of a single ‘red flag’ marker which this list represents, and completely exonerated without even being aware that a problem exists.

“We must never forget the rights of athletes to have their privacy respected, a fact that is reflected in the IAAF anti-doping rules and procedures. Former- associates of the IAAF, hiding in the darkness, should never be allowed the possibility to destroy reputations with information that is taken completely out of context and I believe that the ‘showing’ of this list was disgraceful, cowardly and will do nothing to combat the scourge of doping in athletics.”

Contact the writer of this story at mike.rowbottom@insidethegames.biz

Author

Mike Rowbottom
Mike Rowbottom covered the last three Olympic Games as chief feature writer for insidethegames, and the previous five for The Independent in London. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer and The Guardian.
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