Exclusive – Daley Thompson on Seb Coe, WADA and why athletics has hit rock bottom after doping scandal
Former Olympic champion and regular talkSPORT presenter Daley Thompson has delivered his verdict on the ongoing doping scandal in athletics.
Reports emerged last week that Lamine Diack, the former head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), is under investigation for allegedly taking payments to defer sanctions against Russian drug cheats before the 2012 Olympics.
The WADA report also identified ‘systemic failures’ in the IAAF that prevent an ‘effective’ anti-doping programme.
Thompson is a close ally of Sebastian Coe, the new IAAF president, but didn’t hold back when he revealed his plan for change to the Colin Murray show.
Thompson on state-funded doping in Russia:
"I’m really disappointed because I thought it being government backed was a thing in our sport’s dark past, but clearly it isn’t. They’ve found this mysterious laboratory in Moscow - it’s been back to the bad old days."
On living as an athlete through an era of doping:
";It was strange when you look at it from the outside, because as athletes you know the type of improvements people make, and when you see people making huge, huge strides when you haven’t seen them for a while, you think why doesn’t that happen to me?
"As an athlete the last thing you want to do is waste energy thinking everyone is out there cheating and is an unfair playing field. That unfortunately helps to hide everything that is going on. At the very least you think that the people running the sport should be trying to uphold its good name."
On WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency):
"Part of the problem with them is a lot of the things they do is more of a box-ticking exercise rather than enforcement. I think their priorities will need to change because it should be so much more stick than it is carrot."
On punishment v rehabilitation:
"In terms of punishment versus rehabilitation, I believe the two can go hand in hand. It works in our penal system so why can’t it in our sport? The fact that the IOC has said they can’t do anything seems to me that they are jumping the gun, because it is in all sports’ interests to make sure the cancer of drugs is stopped or at least slowed down."
On techniques used by WADA and funding:
"Organisations like the FIFA and the IOC get billions and billions coming in every year and WADA only get £26 million. It seems to me that if I thought my sport or sport in general was in danger of becoming nothing in the public’s consciousness I would be trying to root it out and spending a lot more money on it.
"Why don’t they use the same techniques as journalists do? Why haven’t we got investigators doing what they do?"
On what Seb Coe needs to do:
"I think he needs to stand up and be seen to be doing something. I don’t think that a time like this is a time to be sitting back and taking everything in, if you are a leader and not a diplomat you need to say some things and really make a stand."
On the future of athletics:
"I can’t see the end of it but having said that cycling and baseball have both been through big scandals and they are recovering. It’s been a 10 or 15 year break from public consciousness for both though. It was only this year that baseball has started to attract an audience outside of the home teams’ markets with this year’s World Series.
"It could really be the nadir if we don’t look after it."