World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has dismissed a call by anti-doping activists to suspend nations which record too many positive cases in a year.
The world governing body boss has been petitioned by a group that features former running stars and respected coaches — some of them from South Africa — wanting to see more being done in the war against drug use in their sport.
Mark Plaatjes, the former South African who won the 1993 world marathon title under the US flag, and former women’s world record-holder Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway, are among signatories on a petition calling for Kenya to be sanctioned.
When they began their campaign they questioned the legitimacy of Ruth Chepngetich’s women’s world marathon record, which was ratified by World Athletics. For them, her 2hr 09min 56sec mark from 2024 was too fast and had to have been dodgy.
She subsequently failed a doping test and the group, fronted by respected coach Peter Eriksson, who has headed up the British Olympic and Paralympic teams, renewed their efforts.
In a follow-up letter to Coe they demanded, among other things, that nations with 10 or more positive tests be suspended for the rest of a calendar year, and coaches and agents linked to doping athletes be suspended.
During a video call with journalists this week, Coe said he didn’t agree with the summary suspension of nations. “This is a field I’ve been labouring in for a number of years, and you have to be very cognisant of different environments and different circumstances,” he said, adding the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), created as part of his anti-doping reforms some 10 years ago, were particularly active in countries with elevated levels.
Earlier this year the AIU website listed 126 Kenyans serving bans, most of them from 2021 onwards. India was second on 120, followed by Russia (69), China (29), Türkiye (22), Italy (19), and South Africa (17).
The number of South Africans is even higher now with a few positive tests in recent months.
“We have the watch list where a lot of work goes on behind the scenes, and so I’d rather progress on the basis that you deal with those challenges and absolutely understand what the problem is because they’re not uniform,” said Coe.
“The issue we dealt with in Russia was very different from the issues that we confront in Kenya, and I don’t think there is a one size fits all here.”
Russia was banned from international competition after accounts of state-sponsored doping emerged.
Coe said the AIU were already prepared to take action against coaches, agents and other support staff members around athletes failing drug tests. “There is scope within the [AIU] to do that if they have the evidence to hand.
“We should always question the landscape the athletes are operating in, we should always examine the entourage and some of those influences. The AIU are always aware, not just of the pathology around the athlete, they are always conscious about what is also in that space around the athletes.”
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