The world of athletics is in for a shock.
Classified documents from the International Association of Athletics Federation have revealed that some of the biggest world events featured athletes who cheated – and some did so on their way to winning medals as well.
The Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WRD secured access to the documents through a whistleblower and they feature 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes.
Both organizations went on to access the services of renowned experts Robin Parisotto and Michael Ashenden, both of whom drew several crucial conclusions upon thoroughly inspecting and studying the documents.
With just one month left before the IAAF World Athletics Championship takes place in Beijing, this revelation escalates serious questions regarding the legitimacy of IAAF and whether they’ve been doing enough to combat the niggling issue of doping within athletics.
The matter has inevitably been brought to the attention of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and its representative expressed their shock at hearing the news before reiterating that they would be doing everything possible to get to the bottom of this crisis.
“These are wild allegations, wide allegations and we will check them out and have that done with the commission as quickly as possible,” WADA chief Craig Reedie told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, according to Reuters.
“I am very surprised by the numbers from the leak from the IAAF I am sure they will want to look at it closely to determine the source,” Reedie said.
“It was the spread of the allegations that came from previous programmes (that surprised me). If you look at allegations on blood issues… they are even wider. So that’s a concern. But I stress athletes are innocent until proven guilty.”
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