Dick Pound is the toughest and most uncompromising sporting administrator I’ve ever met. He is a legend in the fight against drugs in sport as the founder of WADA in 1999.
But the 73-year-old Canadian lawyer’s career started a lot earlier, as a freestyler at the 1960 Rome Olympics, president of the Canadian Olympic Council from 1977 to 1982 and secretary in 1988, and two-time IOC vice-president from 1987 to 1991 and 1996 to 2000.
Yesterday Pound questioned how members of the IAAF executive, the governing body of world athletics, didn’t know about the corruption and doping scandals in Russia.
“The IAAF has shown no appetite to stamp out corruption,” Pound said.
Former IAAF president Lamine Diack has been charged with corruption and bribery for sweeping the Russian positive drug tests under the carpet.
England’s squeaky-clean Lord Sebastian Coe – the 1500-metere track Olympic gold medallist in 1980 at Moscow and 1984 in Los Angeles – was a member of the IAAF executive for seven years, before he took over as president from Diack last year.
As Pound is renowned for telling everything as it sits, warts and all, Coe must categorically tell the sporting world how he knew nothing about the Russian scandal when he was on the IAAF executive, especially as Pound said yesterday, “there is an enormous amount of reputational recovery, and I can think of no one better than Lord Coe to lead that.”
Something here doesn’t pass the smell test.
Pound has included Coe as a member of the IAAF executive who should have known about Diack’s corruption and bribery, yet in virtually the same breath promoted Coe as the saviour of athletics.
FIFA and the IAAF are just two known examples of corruption within their ranks, but how many other sports are corrupt?
For the moment, the biggest clearance must come from Lord Coe, and the quicker the better – for him and athletics.
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