All that glisters

WITH two weeks until the Athletics World Championships in Beijing, fans of track and field are looking forward to an opportunity to marvel at sporting prowess. But they have just received a reminder that performances that seem too good to be true may be just that.

On August 2nd the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, and ARD/WDR, a German broadcaster, released an analysis of leaked results of 12,000 blood tests carried out by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) from 2001-12. It found that one in seven athletes’ tests showed results “highly suggestive of doping” and that a third of medals in endurance events were won by competitors whose tests raised suspicions. Robin Parisotto, a scientist consulted by the news groups, called the most extreme results “downright dangerous” to athletes’ health, and said the IAAF had “sat by and let this happen”.

The IAAF, whose members will choose a new president in August, has come out swinging. Sebastian Coe, one of the candidates, described the leak as a “declaration of war on my sport”. Lamine Diack, the outgoing president, claimed that “behind all this there is a desire to redistribute medals”. The IAAF says it runs sport’s most rigorous blood tests, notes that it has stripped medals from many athletes and accuses the media of confusing tests that raise red flags (perhaps because of illness or altitude training) for definitive positive results.

The controversy is sure to cast a shadow over the IAAF’s signature event later this month. However, fans of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt (a likely star in Beijing) can rest easy: all the record-holding sprinter’s tests in the database were clean.