It is not without danger to show up in the immediate vicinity of an athletics stadium, in these very turbulent times for the first Olympic sport. Thomas Bach experienced it this Friday, August 21, at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beijing. The IOC President was invited to lead, with his IAAF counterpart, the Senegalese Lamine Diack (our photo), a joint meeting of the two decision-making bodies of their respective institutions. The Executive Board for the IOC, the Council for the IAAF. In itself, there is nothing to stop the flow of time. But the press conference which followed the said meeting, in a hotel lounge the size of a cathedral, revolved around a single subject, predictable but a little repetitive: doping. A slippery subject, for both.
According to Lamine Diack, relations between the IAAF and the IOC are a “long, quiet road”. The two institutions respect and appreciate each other. Their joint press conference in Beijing proved that they also knew how to speak the same language, neat and polite, but rather empty of content.
On one side, an upright Lamine Diack, assuring in a barely veiled voice: “I don’t believe that athletics has lost its credibility. We are hearing a lot of noise in the press at the moment, but the accusations against us from certain media are ridiculous and sensationalist. We continue to work to fight doping. I've been doing it for a long time. Seb (Coe) will continue the work with the same transparency. I'm not denying that we have a problem right now, but that's how life is, it's a series of problems. We will fix it. »
The president of the IAAF, to drive the point home, takes a handful of figures out of his pocket. He wants to be convincing, but his data has the opposite effect. “We do 3000 doping tests a year, only 200 of them are positive,” he says. But why are you so interested in these exceptions? You forget to talk about all the athletes whose tests are negative. »Two hundred dopers per year is still not nothing, Mr. President...
On the other side of the table, an extremely cautious Thomas Bach, managing the feat of answering most of the questions at length, but without really deviating from a smooth and conventional speech. Like Lamine Diack, Thomas Bach carefully avoids the affirmative mode. “An investigation has been entrusted to an independent commission,” he said. Let's wait for its results before making a decision. It is not appropriate to make comments today. I remind you that we must respect the presumption of innocence. Suspicious analyzes released by the press did not reveal any positive cases before 2009 and the introduction of the biological passport by the IAAF. They can only serve as indications for targeting anti-doping controls. »
Following in the footsteps of Lamine Diack, Thomas Bach also admits his confidence in Sebastian Coe, newly elected head of the IAAF. “With Sebastian, we have always been together in the fight against doping. We will continue to work closely, for zero tolerance in matters of doping. » The IOC president even welcomes the idea formulated by the Briton of creating an independent body responsible for leading the fight. An idea that could be discussed, assured Thomas Bach, during the next Olympic Summit, scheduled for October in Lausanne. The future looks good. Who said anything about problems?
