No, I haven’t made anything up!
You haven’t repeatedly told me about Helsinki! You mentioned it once, in response to another poster. And in any case, you miss the point entirely. The poster I responded to was asking about another poster’s point that Communist East Europeans avoided the EUROPEAN CIRCUIT MEETS, nothing to do with major Champs in Europe, which I explained later in my post. I explained why they avoided the likes of Oslo, Zurich, etc. Let me spell it out to you.... if an athlete who is on a monitored drug programme run by their own national doctors, then competing on a weekly or semi regular basis around Europe, where we know there was some testing, then the likelihood of being caught increases. Hence they avoided a lot of European circuit meets, especially prior to any championships that may occur in any specific year.
I then stated, as the poster I was responding to cited 1980, that of course it would be easy for Russian (and East Europeans) athletes to dope to their eyeballs at home games. I also stated that their methodical, highly monitored testing support team could also get them to a position where they wouldn’t test positive at a championship outside of the Iron Curtain. That is the only time where any mention of Helsinki would be relevant to the point I was making.
Avoiding detection during a week’s window during a championship (whether it’s in Helsinki, Paris or Timbuktu), while spending the previous 4 months training and competing in one’s home country while participating in an intensely monitored drug programme, is far easier than avoiding detection and trying to stay on same drug programme while spending June, July and early August running on the circuit around Europe!
Blood doping was banned in 1985, based on a UK government white paper published by Coe and the then UK Sports minister called for its ban. It was adopted by the UK Sports Council and then by IAAF.
Random OOC test was introduced in UK in 1983, and was being carried out for 6 years before the IAAF adopted it.
Prior to Co’s tenure as IAAF President there was an expectation of the current world’s top 10 being tested randomly by the IAAF itself. The other expectation was for National Athletic Drug Organisations to carry out more in depth testing of their own nation’s athletes. Some did this robustly, with registers compiled of athletes’ whereabouts on a daily basis. Other countries claimed they were too poor to do this and were left exempt. This inequality is where most of our current problems stem from.
With the Sochi and RUSADA case, it has been shown that corruption and cover up of one’s own athletes’ samples has been organised by the NADO. But this is just Russia. Hard evidence about state sponsored doping and its cover up by 1 country. That’s not to claim it hasn’t happened elsewhere, but we can’t just start claiming all countries do it without the evidence.
On the basis of this, Coe has created the AIU, comprised of independent/ neutral members, to do the job that some NADOs were unable to do legally.
So far the AIU has uncovered various drug rings and uncovered widespread corruption in Kenya.
These are far more positive developments than occurred under Diack or Nebiolo.