Gatlin has ‘the right to compete’
Print Edition
OLYMPICS chief Thomas Bach said yesterday he favored life bans for drug cheats, lamenting that current laws made such hardline measures impossible to execute.
Asked about a possible scenario of the twice-suspended Justin Gatlin winning the 100 meters world title in Beijing this weekend, Bach avoided direct reference to the controversial American but made his feelings clear on the doping scandal engulfing athletics.
“If you ask me about my emotions, I would say clearly, yes, I would still support a lifetime ban,” the International Olympic Committee president told a news conference on the eve of the world championships.
“But legally it’s just not possible. A lifelong ban would not stand any kind of (legal) challenge so we have to accept that.
“As for (Gatlin), if you have an athlete who has served his suspension then he has the right to compete. It’s a legal question not to be able to take stricter sanctions, a question of human rights.”
Bach pointed to the so-called Osaka Rule implemented by the IOC in 2008 and banning athletes from competing at the next Olympics if they had been suspended for six months or longer, which was subsequently overturned in court. “We made an effort and again we lost the court case,” said Bach.
The specter of doping hangs over the championships after claims data from 12,000 blood tests between 2001 and 2012 revealed an “extraordinary extent of cheating” and that 50 Olympic and world gold medals could be tainted by drug use.
The International Association of Athletics Federations has stringently denied accusations it failed to follow up on suspicious test results and suspended 28 athletes last week after samples from the 2005 and 2007 worlds were retested.
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