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World athletics' governing body 'blocked' doping study

A doping study that allegedly revealed a third of top athletes admitted cheating was blocked by the world athletics' governing body, The Sunday Times has reported.

The newspaper accused the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) of stopping the 2011 study from being published and prevented its authors from speaking about it.

The IAAF denied vetoing the study and dismissed the Times report as "not a new story".

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Athletics body denies 'blocking' doping report

The governing body of world athletics has fiercely denied claims made in The Sunday Times that it blocked the publication of research that showed a third of top athletes had admitted cheating.

ITV News's Peter Smith reports:

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IAAF: Claim of blocked doping report 'is not a new story'

World athletics' governing body has dismissed newspaper claims it blocked a 2011 doping study that allegedly revealed a third of top athletes had admitted cheating.

In response to the Sunday Times report, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said: "This is not a new story, having first been raised on German TV in 2013, and those concerns were addressed by the IAAF at the time."

The study in question was a social science based survey conducted by WADA and a team of researchers at the Athletes’ village in Daegu. The purpose of the study was to assess the reliability of potential new methods of evaluating the prevalence of doping in sport using more of a social science approach (randomised-response survey). The survey was intended to be extended to multi-sport events and no publication was ever evoked. In fact, the survey was only ever repeated once, with a revised methodology, at the Pan-Arabic Games where mainly athletes were interviewed.

The IAAF was therefore surprised when it was informed in early 2013 that an article had already been submitted by the research team for publication in a scientific journal without the IAAF’s knowledge. The IAAF understands that the article was rejected for publication.

– IAAF
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