Athletics chief says sponsors can help doping fight

The chairman of UK Athletics has said that the fight against doping is “under resourced” and suggested that more sponsorship cash should be used to ensure better tests and transparency.

Ed Warner implied that sponsors could be doing more to help by staying rather than pulling out - and also suggested that football TV sponsorship money should be siphoned off for the fight against cheats.

“One of the things that sport has to do across all sport is find a way to secure more of its revenues for the fight against doping,” he told MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport committee.

Mr Warner said the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) should set aside “a fixed percentage” of all its sponsorship income to spend on anti-doping measures – and also suggested football TV revenues could contribute.

He said it would “make a lot of sense” if football also handed over a “very small proportion” of its global television income to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

“Football probably wouldn’t notice the difference but WADA certainly would,” he said.