Athletics-AIU's work helping more countries medal, says Howman

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AIU's act having touchable wallop on the feature, says Howman

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Athletes thankful for the results

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We have a gold standard organisation, says WA President Coe

By Mitch Phillips

TOKYO, Sept 19 - David Howman, chairman of the Athletics Integrity Unit, says his organisation's anti-doping work is having a tangible impact on the sport and the evidence is to be seen in the wider range of countries winning medals at the world championships.

The AIU was set up as an independent arm of World Athletics in 2017 following the Russian doping scandal and is seen by many as the benchmark across all sport for fighting the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

After his victory in the 10,000 metres final in Tokyo on Sunday, Frenchman Jimmy Gressier - the second-ever non-Africa-born winner of the event and first since 1983 said; "Today I beat East Africa. The AIU is doing a huge job and it helps to level the playing field a bit more."

ATHLETES AND AIU GRATEFUL TO EACH OTHER

Asked on Thursday about the comments, Howman said the appreciation went both ways.

"That's really gratifying to hear that athletes are appreciating what we're doing," he told a press conference in the Tokyo Olympic Stadium.

"That's what we're here for, to get the people who are intentionally defrauding other athletes out of podium positions, out of money, out of sponsorships, out of enjoying the moment when they succeed. "We, of course, have meetings regularly with the World Athletic Commission and they are very, very happy with the way it's going. "I think one way you could look at that is how many people from countries that haven't won medals before are now winning medals? How many people are winning gold medals where they have not won gold medals for 50 years? How many people are making finals?

"So if you start looking at it from that perspective, then the playing field is at least getting more levelled because competitors around the world can say, 'I can make that'.”

GOLD STANDARD ORGANISATION

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe also praised the work of the AIU, having been integral to its establishment soon after he was elected in 2015.

"We have a gold standard organisation. The return of our reputation and our trust has, in a large part, been through the creation of the AIU," he told reporters.

"I've always said I'd rather have the short-term embarrassment of a positive test than the long-term insidious decline in values and standards. We didn't just set up an anti-doping agency, we set up an integrity unit that is now an organisation probably getting on for 40 people.

"They're very good at what they do and I think they are leading the way in international sport."

The AIU has certainly made a huge impact in Kenya, the powerhouse of distance running, which was declared "non-compliant" by the World Anti-Doping Agency, last week.

AIU head Brett Clothier said the country had been "the Wild West" in terms of doping in recent years with huge numbers of bans being handed out.

"Absolutely, there have been more cases than before because there's way more testing," he said. "We have more cases but less doping but there is still a lot of doping in Kenya."

Clothier said that over the last five years Kenyan out-of-competition tests have gone from 400 a year to 4,000 and from 30 athletes in their registered testing pool to 300. "There have been huge amounts of progress and huge amounts of work that have been done," he said. "The code compliance issues they have right now are not good enough and we make no apologies for the integrity of our sport, that we need the anti-doping agency to be at the same elite level as the athletes."

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