Athletics corruption: Inquiry widens to include Rio and Tokyo bids

Bidding and voting process to be looked at

(Getty Images)

French prosecutors investigating corruption at world governing body the IAAF have widened their investigation to include the bidding processes for this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo in 2020.

The World Anti-Doping Agency independent commission, headed by Dick Pound, had called on authorities to look into how the host cities were selected for athletics’ World Championships as well as the Olympics.

Now that investigation, which had centred on alleged corruption by former IAAF president Lamine Diack, his lawyer Habib Cissé and former head of anti-doping at the IAAF Gabriel Dollé, is examining the International Olympic Committee bidding and voting processes.

A spokesman for the IOC told The Guardian: “The IOC has been in close contact with the French prosecutors since the beginning of this investigation last year.

“The IOC’s ethics and compliance officer had already asked for the IOC to be fully informed in a timely manner of all issues that may refer to Olympic matters and has applied to become a party to the investigations led by the French judicial authorities.”

When Pound raised questions about Tokyo 2020, event organisers said it was “beyond our understanding”.

Any suggestion of irregularities behind London’s successful bid to host the 2017 World Championships were given similarly short shrift by officials in the capital.

Meanwhile, Neil Black, the performance director of British Athletics, said he was comfortable that Mo Farah and other British runners had gone to Ethiopia for winter training despite reports suggesting a raft of failed drugs tests are set to come out of the east African nation.

On Monday, it was revealed former world 1500m champion Abeba Aregawi, the Ethiopian-born Swedish athlete, had failed a drugs test. Her agent Valentijn Trouw described her as “shocked and devastated”, but there are rumours further positive tests are looming from Ethiopia.

In response, Black said: “The camps and time we have in Ethiopia are fully supervised, so we’re comfortable with what we do, but we are not foolish that we’ll sit back and think that because we’ve done it before, that’s what we’ll always do. We’ll pay attention to information.”

Black’s comments came on the day the 23-strong British team, headed by Olympic and World long jump champion Greg Rutherford, was announced for the World Indoor Championships in Portland this month.

Rutherford is bidding to become the first athlete to have won the Olympic, World, European, Commonwealth and World Indoor title, but he and his team-mates will have to sign an agreement for the first time which states that, if found guilty of doping, they will never wear a GB vest again.

The British team is missing many of its star names, with Jessica Ennis-Hill injured and Farah focusing on this month’s World Half-Marathon Championships in Cardiff.

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British team for World Indoor Championships

Men

60m James Dasaolu, Andrew Robertson

1500m Charlie Grice, Chris O’Hare

3,000m Lee Emanuel

60m hurdles Lawrence Clarke

High jump Chris Baker, Robbie Grabarz

Long jump Dan Bramble, Greg Rutherford

Women

60m Dina Asher-Smith, Asha Philip

800m Lynsey Sharp, Adelle Tracey

3,000m Josephine Moultrie, Stephanie Twell

60m hurdles Tiffany Porter, Serita Solomon

High jump Isobel Pooley

Long jump Shara Proctor, Lorraine Ugen

Pentathlon Morgan Lake