Oregon, July 23. (PA Media/dpa/EUROPA PRESS)
The president of the International Athletics Federation (World Athletics), Sebastian Coe, wanted current athletes to break old records, a “different” time where “sporadic” anti-doping controls were not “the safest”.
“We know it was a different time. There’s nothing we can legally do about it, but it may not be the safest records. Now we have the AIU (Athletics Integrity Unit), we have their own national anti-doping agency which works much better. that when I came to office, you have agencies all over the world,” said the former British middle-distance runner.
“It’s a different world from the one I was part of, but the reality is that legally there is very little that can be done and I think we have to be realistic about it. I have to accept that it was a time when testing was a bit sporadic. , added the highest representative of World Athletics.
Jamaican Shericka Jackson won gold this Thursday in the 200 meters at the World Championships in Outdoor Athletics in Eugene, Oregon (United States), with a new competition record and the second best mark in history (21.45). She was second only to Florence Griffiths-Joyner’s time of 21.34 seconds in 1988.
“I would rather see an organic change through the Shericka Jacksons, who are now regularly tested,” Coe added. However, Griffiths-Joyner, who died in 1998, has never failed a doping test and there has been no conclusive evidence that she was doping. She also holds the 100m world record of 10.49 seconds from 1988.
One of the only remaining individual athletics records from the 1980s is that of Marita Koch in the 400-meter dash, clocking 47.60 seconds, at a time when East Germany was known to systematically dope its athletes.
Koch has never failed a doping test and has maintained she did nothing wrong, while Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova holds the 800m mark from 1983. “When you look at the athletes who had to go through that system, you feel more sympathy than athletes who chose, of their own free will in liberal democracies, to do so,” he said.