If you click on The Guardian link, it says "This article was temporarily taken down on 8 December 2014."
If you click on The Guardian link, it says "This article was temporarily taken down on 8 December 2014."
Back with the lawyers.
The Guardian does have another pretty explosive article up on its website that came out today entitled, "Top Briton said to be among suspicious blood tests notified to IAAF"http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/09/iaaf-alleged-blind-eye-suspicious-blood-tests-briton
The Guardian wrote:
Sensational claims that 150 athletes, including one of Britain’s best-known track and field stars, had suspicious blood values that were covered up have been played down by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The allegations, made by the German TV station WDR, were based on a whisteblower from the IAAF’s medical commission, who told the programme Inside Sport he had a list of dozens of suspicious blood tests that were not followed up from 2006 to 2008.
Many of the samples were reported to have come from Russian athletes but among others involved were three British athletes who are said to be on the list
The IAAF's response (listed below) was that a single blood test doesn't mean anything - you need a lot of them to build a bioligical passport. I agree with that actually but it seems like it's pile on the IAAF right now.
The Guardian wrote:
The IAAF inferred it would be wrong to assume too much from blood tests, given the athlete biological passport was introduced only in 2009 “when Wada [the World Anti-Doping Agency] set out a harmonised regulatory framework allowing the use of reliable and comparable values”.
The IAAF also suggested the tests conducted between 2006 and 2008 might not be able to show an athlete had doped and has hinted that the knowledge of WDR’s whistleblower might be incomplete.
“The blood data collected before 2009 were used for target purposes to trigger follow-up urine tests for EPO detection,” it said. “This was the practice by the few international federations which were conducting blood tests back then. Abnormal results were duly followed up by the IAAF, whenever possible logistically.
“One cannot draw any conclusion on whether or not an athlete has doped on the basis of one single blood value. The whole concept of the ABP is to monitor the variations of an athlete’s profile consisting of multiple values. A member of the IAAF medical and anti-doping commission would not know whether follow-up tests would have been conducted or not.”
We need a level of athletics competition that tests for nothing.
Ed Mr. wrote:
We need a level of athletics competition that tests for nothing.
Women will turn into men. Men's balls will shrink. We can't have that happen.
Ed Mr. wrote:
We need a level of athletics competition that tests for nothing.
Yes
I've thought this for years. Allow athletes to take any combination of performance enhancing substances without any hindrance. Rather, make available the information and experts who can determine the ideal combination of substances for an athlete without compromising their short/long -term health
Who knows what the ultimate ceiling can be for each event?
Imagine someone running 9.3x and 18.9 for 100/200
Or 12:1x for 5k and 25:2x for a 10k?
We'd finally see the sub-2 marathon
Yesterday, the UK's Guardian briefly published an explosive article saying Lamine Diack's son had asked for a 5 million bribe:
The Guardian wrote:
A cache of documents seen by the Guardian that lifts the lid on the affluent, sometimes chaotic rush to bring major sporting events to Qatar reveals Papa Massata Diack asked for the payment - $4.5m via bank transfer and $440,000 in cash to be collected in person in Doha - in October 2011. The email was sent at a time when the Qater Olympic Committee had been lobbying his father, Lamine, to agree to chane the dates for the 2017 world athletics championships and the 2020 Olympic Games, for which it was also bidding.
The article was initially published at this URL:
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/dec/08/son-iaaf-president-lamine-diack-5m-doha-2017-bidThat article has now been taken down.
We only found out about it as a portal site has the initial article up at this link:
http://sportsnewsportal.net/en/son-of-iaaf-president-lamine-diack-demanded-5m-from-doha-2017-bid/Sterons wrote:
Ed Mr. wrote:We need a level of athletics competition that tests for nothing.
Yes
I've thought this for years. Allow athletes to take any combination of performance enhancing substances without any hindrance. Rather, make available the information and experts who can determine the ideal combination of substances for an athlete without compromising their short/long -term health
Who knows what the ultimate ceiling can be for each event?
Imagine someone running 9.3x and 18.9 for 100/200
Or 12:1x for 5k and 25:2x for a 10k?
We'd finally see the sub-2 marathon
The sad thing is, the all dirty athletics competitions would get better ratings...and put the clean athletes out of business.
Papa Diack is in charge of the agency that does all the sponsorings deals of the IAAF (==> 20% for him, no thats not bribbing; ). These allegations against him are been discussed since a long time. Finaly someone makes it public. The ARD movie opened the door now many start talking.
Sterons wrote:
Ed Mr. wrote:We need a level of athletics competition that tests for nothing, or at least unwilling to bust any big names.
Yes
I've thought this for years. Allow athletes to take any combination of performance enhancing substances without any hindrance. Rather, make available the information and experts who can determine the ideal combination of substances for an athlete without compromising their short/long -term health
Who knows what the ultimate ceiling can be for each event?
Imagine someone running 9.58 and 19.19 for 100/200
Or 12:37 for 5k and 26:17 for a 10k?
We'd finally see the sub-2:03 marathon
Corrected.
like father like son. it's a family racket. unbelievable. loathe, loathe, loathe these two people
from lamine's wikipedia entry:
The ethics committee of the IOC conducted a year long investigation into claims that Diack received bribes from the bankrupt sports marketing company International Sport and Leisure.[2] Diack had received three payments of $30,000 and 30,000 French francs in 1993. Diack had personally received the cash payments from ISL at a time when the company was in negotiations with the IAAF to sign a marketing contract. The IOC described Diack as having "placed himself in a conflict of interest situation".[3]
Diack claimed that he received the money from supporters after his house burned down.[3] Diack was warned for his behaviour, with the fact that he was not a member of IOC at the time of the wrongdoing considered a mitigating factor.[3]
What a Diack.
I bet his mom is a Biatch too.
The son of Lamine Diack, the president of the world governing body of athletics, appeared to request a payment of $5m in the course of Doha’s failed bid to win the right to host the 2017 world championships, according to leaked emails seen by the Guardian.
A cache of documents that appear to lift the lid on the affluent, sometimes chaotic rush to bring sporting events to Qatar suggests an email purporting to be from Papa Massata Diack, a consultant to the International Association of Athletics Federations, asked for the payment – $4.5m via bank transfer and $440,000 in cash to be collected in person in Doha – in October 2011. It is not clear whether the payment was made.
The IAAF said no contract between it or the state investment entities QSI or Oryx QSI – or any other Qatari companies – had been signed during that period. An IAAF spokesman said he had spoken to Papa Massata Diack and he had denied “receiving any such payment nor ever acting in such a manner on behalf of the IAAF”.
Papa Massata Diack failed to respond to direct requests for comment.
The email was sent around a month before the final presentations for the 2017 bid, in which Doha lost out to London. However, last month Doha returned to the table and succeeded in landing the world championships for 2019.
The email requesting the payment and including bank details included a letter of affirmation from the then IAAF commercial and marketing director, Luis Carulla, confirming Papa Massata Diack had been sublicensed the exclusive marketing rights for territories including Qatar.
“Please find enclosed the IAAF letter of affirmation that QSI [Qatar Sports Investments] or Oryx QSI is asking. I do not owe it to them but to Your HH and yourself as only you know the role I play in this matter,” said the email.
“Attached is also the bank account details for the transfer to be done of US$4.500.000 as agreed; the balance of US$440,000 is to stay in Doha cash as I will collect it there when I came next.”
In a statement in response to questions to the Qatar Olympic Committee, the Qatar Athletics Federation said it did not recognise the emails and instead focused on the legitimacy of its successful bid for the 2019 world championships. “We are not aware of the email exchanges to which you refer. Our bid was conducted in a professional manner and complied with all rules and regulations,” said its general secretary, Mohammed al-Kuwari..
“We won the bid because our offer was ultimately the strongest, with compact, world-class facilities for athletes and visitors, as well as the opportunity for the sport to expand its horizons into a new part of the world.”
The emails cover a period from 2008 to 2011, during which Doha was in the process of bidding for the 2020 Olympic Games and Qatar controversially won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
Papa Massata Diack is a prominent figure within the athletics world and has often been in the thick of the action when it comes to bidding for its events, the politics of the IAAF and the sponsorship and broadcasting contracts that underpin the sport.
The bid team from Brisbane were furious in 2007, when the rights to the 2011 world championships went to Daegu in South Korea and the 2013 edition to Moscow. Papa Massata Diack acted as a consultant to the Russian bid. For both winning cities underwritten sponsorship deals were a key factor.
The company founded by Papa Massata Diack, Pamodzi Sports Marketing, also branched out beyond athletics and was one of those implicated during the summer in the scandal involving World Cup hospitality tickets in Brazil.
Papa Massata Diack told the Associated Press at the time that the deal with Match Hospitality, through which tickets ended up on the black market, was arranged through the Nigerian arm of the company of which he was no longer the owner. He acts as an official adviser to the IAAF in emerging markets under agreement with its marketing partner, the Japanese firm Dentsu.
The IAAF confirmed Papa Massata Diack held the contract to exploit marketing opportunities in emerging markets including Brazil, Russia, India, China, UAE, Qatar, South Korea, Mexico, Africa and the Caribbean. The contract was signed in 2007 and runs until 2015. It also confirmed he had a sublicensing agrement with Dentsu signed in 2010.
Dentsu recently renewed its own marketing contract with the IAAF until 2029 in a deal reportedly worth £11m a year until 2019 and £14m per year thereafter.
Of the five world championships in this decade, four were awarded to cities in emerging markets – Daegu (2011), Moscow (2013), Beijing (2015) and Doha (2019).
In its response, the IAAF praised Papa Massata Diack’s role in delivering revenue streams, listing new deals with VTB Bank in Russia, Samsung in South Korea, Nirmal Lifestyle in India, CCTV 5 in China and the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel in the UAE.
It also said an independent ethics committee was introduced in 2014 to handle any complaints about the sport, which has been engulfed recently by doping claims alleging systematic cheating by the Russian Athletics Federation.
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LetsRun.com thinking
brought to you by TacoBell, Sony, and NBC Sports:
"Some are trying to say that Doha bought Worlds. Our thought? We hope they did buy it." - LetsRun.com anonymous editor, on Doha winning the 2019 WC's. LetsRun.com, hard-scrabble journalists always trying to 'clean up the sport'.
"We don’t understand why [a bank buying the WC's for Doha] would create an uproar." - LetsRun.com bashing those who might think corporations buying off the IAAF is problematic.
"The fact of the matter is that sports teams are bought all of the time." - LetsRun.com, who also extends this logic to drug users ("The fact of the matter is, athletes and coaches and agents and sponsors cheat all of the time. Some are trying to say that some athletes dope to win. We hope they do") and national governing bodies ("The fact of the matter is, the USATF lets Nike decide its policies, including DQ's, all the time. We hope they do.")
2 weeks later:
"LRC Message Board Exclusive Fresh off the Pages of The Guardian!! An explosive bombshell of an allegation! Diack's Son Asked for $5 million personal bribe for 2017 worlds." - LetsRun.com capitalizing on uproar after it is reported by journalists at The Guardian.
Hi, LetsRun.com, it is not 'an explosive bombshell' to assume that countries and corporations - who are straight-up buying IAAF WC's (with your committed vocal support in your widely-read weekly round-up) - are doing so in a shady way that benefits the Diack family and hurts the sport. This is pretty much a replay of the oldest script in the book. In your editorials, rather than criticize and shame people who care about these issues, it's your responsibility to dig deeper (for an example of what digging deeper looks like, see The Guardian's coverage of Papa Diack). I don't appreciate that you a) bash people for being upset at the corruption at IAAF while b) posting big blaring headlines that link to your own message board posts, once the inevitable scandal actually occurs and has been unearthed by another organization doing actual journalism.
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Let's go back a week or two:
LetsRun.com Editorial on Doha winning worlds:
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LetsRun.com's 6th thought (sic?) on Doha:
"6. Some are trying to say that Doha bought Worlds. Our thought? We hope they did buy it.
"Some are trying to make an issue out of an insidethegames.biz report that part of Doha’s bid 'involved a $30 million (£19 million/€24 million) pledge from a Qatari bank to become a new Official IAAF Partner in a five-year sponsorship deal.'
"We don’t understand why that would create an uproar.
"The fact of the matter is that sports teams are bought all of the time – normally with cities paying much of the bill. Indianapolis bought the Colts from Baltimore with a $77 million stadium, Oklahoma City ‘bought’ the Thunder from Seattle after the Seattle taxpayers refused to fund a $500 million stadium complex but Oklahoma City was willing to spend $120 million.
We had said before the decision was announced that if we were the IAAF we wouldn’t go to Eugene unless Nike came on board as a big-time sponsor. Doha ‘sweetening the pot’ is what happens all the time. Insidethegames.biz reports that “similar deals were part of the bidding process which brought the IAAF title sponsors in Samsung ahead of Daegu’s securing the 2011 World Championships, and VTB, the strategic Russian bank, ahead of the 2013 Moscow World Championships.”
"If Doha didn’t bring in more money to the official IAAF coffers there is no reason Worlds should have gone to Doha."
end quote
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Now that there's an "explosive article" that details where much of that money is going (and why WC's are going to Daegu, Sochi, Doha, etc), it's time for LetsRun.com to act surprised, and drive readership to its own messageboard with the lead link, rather than to the article.
I want to say that as a reader of this site and a follower of the sport: "As a journalist your job is to question the power structures, not write Wetmore hagiographies*, give the IAAF and their corporate sponsors a free pass, and ridicule their doubters in a bullying fashion."
*A hagiography is where you write a simplistic, flattering biography about someone, flush with quotes from the person's biggest supporters. Of course, hagiographers refer to their own work as 'art' and 'journalism', though to people who look more in-depth, these pieces are self-serving trash. For example, one could imagine hagiographies about pre-scandal Lance Armstrong, Adolf Hitler, Papa Diack, etc.
LRC: too often inconsistent and reactionary
LetsRun.com wants to be seen as pro-sport, but they're not doing enough in their editorializing to consistently and proactively critique the governing bodies (reactionary headlines with click-generating links to their message boards not included, criticizing USATF for getting hosed by Nike after the fact is 'reactionary' and obvious).
Track needs to be bigger than bribes
Track is not healthy enough to be making huge organizational decisions based on $5 million in bribes. These bad decisions will drive the sport further into the ground. Would LetsRun.com support the Super Bowl being held in Buenos Aires in a half-empty stadium because some Roger Goodell lackey leached a $50 mil bribe from an Argentina-based multi-national corporation? Well, that would be Rush Limbaugh free-market capitalism at its best, so I guess the answer is, yes (except in this case, the doctrine of American Exceptionalism would probably have to rule out over free-marketeering).
Here's an idea: consistently fight/advocate for transparency
One of the gifts track has right now is that it's out of the mainstream eye, and it's tiny. If the sport is to succeed, it needs to be less, not more, corrupt than other sports. It needs to provide something the other sports don't. One thing the mainstream sports don't seem to provide at all is intelligent, socially-conscious, sensitive self-reflection and adaptability (the modern NBA with Adam Silver - in contrast to the NFL, MLB, Nascar, Premier League, NCAA - is arguably changing that). Given the state of other sports, being less-corrupt and perverse shouldn't be difficult, but apparently it is (Steph Hightower, anyone?). Given that track has a guaranteed spot of fame every four years at the Olympics, a guaranteed grassroots following in the US track scene, a guaranteed marathon scene, and basically zero standing otherwise, the sport should be taking risks to be MORE transparent, MORE progressive, MORE technologically savvy, MORE media savvy, MORE adaptable, MORE intertwined with academics and science, and MORE horizontally structured. Guess what, a lot of people care about those types of things! We're not all stuck in the stone age!
What do we get instead? Seb Coe and Sergei Bubka sword-fighting to be the next in line to be bribed for power.
Stop ranting moralistically? Start working on innovation?
Working toward this requires better media coverage, such as editorialists who emphasize nuanced arguments in their weekly moralistic rants about the sport. For example, the choices of WC's need to be more strategic, and better fit to niches (hint: Doha and Daegu are not niches). Promoting the sale of WC's to the highest bidder is the dumbest possible idea for a sport that is trying to out-smart other stone age outfits like the NFL (which is currently getting KILLED why? Because they are inept at social issues like race, homosexuality, abuse of women and children, brain science, labor issues, transparency, scientific advances, selling out to big corp America, etc). Let me ask you, for a sport that is guaranteed to have its spot every olympic cycle, and that enjoys some of the widest global appeal because of its simplicity (not because of IAAF), is it better to have the WC's in a 10% filled stadium and get some puny f-ing contract with Sony and a bank built on Middle Eastern slavery? Or have it somewhere like Eugene, or a multitude of other cities that would pack the place and build up sustainable support from progressive audiences? Well, the IAAF chooses Putin's Russia, Daegu, Doha, etc. Why? VIP prostitutes. Big oil bankers. Pure cocaine. G-dam awesome vodka. Goodie bags and facials for Stephanie Hightower. Is having worlds in Doha going to help the country's social backwardness? According to LetsRun.com, your internet home for conservative economic and social policy expertise, the answer is an unequivocal YES!
LRC "thought" 4. "The fact that Doha is in the Middle East, where women aren’t on equal footing with men, isn’t a negative. It’s a positive."
See? Shame on those who don't see it the same way as Papa Diack, and all sorts of corporations that love getting contracts and public subsidies for sporting events. All 'insert Arab bank here' has to do is put out a pretty damn convenient (and unresearched) PR-line about how women in Doha will be aided by an event that features women. Um, LRC? It is possible that journalists can be slightly more nuanced than just accepting the corporate PR spin.
What will LRC rant about now?
So, now that we have not just an explosive revelation, not just a bombshell, but an "explosive bombshell" that gives direct evidence as to why these bidding processes need to be critiqued, what will they say about Papa Diack?
"We hope they did buy it." is on the record as the LetsRun.com stance towards Doha, the WC's, and the IAAF (Diack, Diack Jnr, Steph Hightower, etc).
So now we'll hear, "This is just one bad apple. Get rid of him and get back to good people doin business."
The initial stance is vomit-inducing, and shows that their views (shoved down our throats on a weekly basis) towards running a sport or society are totally superficial. With drugs, you've got to crack down hard on the athletes. If there's a faulty DQ, you've got to complain about the USATF. But when it comes to buying the WC's, let the free market sort everything out. Bullshit sloppiness. Just do it how the other corrupt sports do it. Wow, how innovative! I'm willing to wager a guess that these Diack-friendly, IAAF-is-for-sale policies are funding payout structures that result in fewer, not more, clashes between top athletes, poor staffing decisions and global strategy, not to mention incredibly unequal pay structures such as $200,000 for the diamond league winner and, what, $0 for second? How innovative. No other sport knows how to implement policies like that. LRC editors love to complain, but when it comes time to question the decision-makers that brought us here, we're left with lines like, "Some want the IAAF to not simply sell the Worlds to any old corporation/bank/OR state legislature who will buy it. Screw those pansies. We hope they DID buy it."
Media should become nimble, push track to advance
Being smaller, track should be nimble, outwitting other sports by playing a different game. Instead, track is playing the same stupid game as other sports (corporation bribes corrupt IAAF, IAAF craters to corporation, IAAF harms its own for the profit of a few at the top), and the media coverage (aside from the Guardian occasionally doing something useful) is too disorganized, reactionary, and focused on hyperbolic sports hype to actually put a dent in anything.
LetsRun, given your willingness to take a stand on some things, you're better journalists than Flotrack, better journalists than RW or RRW, but it's offensive to see you recycling simplistic opinions every week, opinions that are often illogical, inconsistent, and insulting to people who you claim to "be the voice for". (i.e. fans)
well, at least it's not another beer mile post. that's a start.
Um, about the terminology on the front page.
"Asking for a bribe" isn't the right term. The one you want is simply "blackmail."
So, here the story about one of the British track stars having doping covered up was first reported.
I wonder why in light of the proof that Qatar bribed their way to hosting the games, the IAAF is going ahead with them in Doha this year? I guess for the same reason FIFA is going ahead with the World Cup there. Don't want to have to return the money.