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Most of athletics’ world records could be rewritten under a “revolutionary” new proposal from European Athletics.
It set up a taskforce to examine the credibility of records in January following the sport’s doping scandal.
British world record holders like Paula Radcliffe and Jonathan Edwards could lose their titles under the criteria.
Productive European Athletics Council meeting concluded in Paris today. Full report of decisions published on EA website Monday morning. pic.twitter.com/yHbT9CpNuG
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) April 30, 2017
Svein Arne Hansen, the European Athletics president, said world records “are meaningless if people don’t really believe them”.
European Athletics‘ ruling council has now ratified the proposals put forward by the taskforce and wants the sport’s world governing body, the IAAF, to adopt the changes it sets out.
If the proposals are accepted by the IAAF, world records would only be recognised if:
It was achieved at a competition on a list of approved international events where the highest standards of officiating and technical equipment can be guaranteed;
The athlete had been subject to an agreed number of doping control tests in the months leading up to it;
The doping control sample taken after the record was stored and available for re-testing for 10 years.
The council also recommended that a performance should be wiped from record books if the athlete had committed a “doping or integrity violation, even if it does not directly impact the record performance”.
The proposals are a response to last year’s McLaren report, which uncovered widespread doping in sport – and athletics in particular.
Russian athletes are currently banned from international competition unless they can satisfy strict criteria to show they are clean.
More than 100 Olympic athletes who competed at the 2008 and 2012 Games have been sanctioned for doping after the International Olympic Committee embarked on a programme of retesting old samples.
Culled from BBC Sport
