Lord Coe admits concerns over Doha’s right to host 2019 World Athletics Championships at select committee

The former Olympic champion admitted the sport was fighting for its future amid myriad investigations

Questions had already been raised over Doha’s unsuccessful bid to host the championships in 2017 (Getty Images)

Sebastian Coe cast doubt over the legality of Doha’s winning bid to host the 2019 World Athletics Championships when he faced a Parliamentary select committee.

The president of the International Association of Athletics Federations was grilled for three hours by a panel of 10 MPs and was repeatedly asked about Qatar securing the championships in two years’ time. When questioned if he knew the Doha bid was clean, Coe replied: “I don’t.”

On another dark day for athletics, it was also revealed moments after the hearing concluded that 26 Italian athletes had been handed two-year bans following violations of the whereabouts system, with 39 other athletes from the country under further investigation.

It added a third country under the spotlight over doping following Russia and Kenya. Last week, the IAAF’s ethics commission provisionally suspended three Kenyan officials, including Athletics Kenya president Isaiah Kiplagat, who is being investigated “in relation to receipt, personally or by Athletics Kenya, of an apparent gift of two motor vehicles from the Qatar Athletics Federation in 2014-15”.

Kiplagat has denied any wrongdoing but has been suspended from any activities within either Athletics Kenya or the IAAF, for which he had previously been a council member, for 180 days.

During the hearing, Coe was pressed by MP Paul Farrelly on whether he planned to open an investigation into the 2019 bidding process, but continually avoided the question, instead concentrating on the claims about Kiplagat. “The allegations were made and it surrounds a Kenyan official,” he said. “The police will look at that. The ethics commission will investigate within our own corporate governances and structures. This is a criminal investigation.”

Questions had already been raised over Doha’s unsuccessful bid to host the championships in 2017. The son of Coe’s predecessor, Lamine Diack, had appeared to request a payment of $5m in an email in October 2011 in the course of Doha’s 2017 bid. Papa Massata Diack, a former consultant for the IAAF who was later suspended from that role and is being investigated by the French authorities, had previously told an IAAF spokesman he denied “receiving any such payment nor ever acting in such a manner on behalf of the IAAF”.

Concerns have also been voiced about the awarding of the 2021 World Championships to Eugene without a bidding process, with Coe reiterating his stance from last week that he had done nothing wrong.He also stood by his insistence there was no conflict of interest with his £100,000-a-year Nike ambassadorial role, which he gave up last week.

Coe, who was elected IAAF president in August after eight years as a vice-president, said “it was challengeable” when chair Jesse Norman insisted it was a conflict of interest, while the committee also accused Coe of showing a “lack of curiosity” during his time with the IAAF, with widespread allegations of corruption having emerged in recent weeks.

The former Olympic champion admitted that athletics was fighting for its future amid myriad investigations.Coe called this point “the crossroads” for the sport and warned that if he didn’t fix things as IAAF president then “there are no tomorrows for my sport” and that people would be turned away from athletics.

He added: “No parent is going to nudge their child to a sport that is full of junkies. That’s my responsibility.”