Usain Bolt shocked by IAAF reports, against wiping records
Jamaican sprint king says he feels let down by the extent of the bribery and blackmailing of athletes revealed in the Wada report
Six-time Olympic champion Usain Bolt said he felt shocked and let down by the scandal-hit IAAF, but the Jamaican sprinter was against resetting athletics world records as the sport attempts to move on from the doping crisis.
Thursday’s second instalment of a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report slammed the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), accusing its former head, Lamine Diack, of running a clique that covered up organised doping and blackmailed athletes as senior officials looked the other way.
The first part of the report by independent investigator Dick Pound, a former head of Wada, in November led to athletics superpower Russia being banned from competition for state-sponsored doping.
READ MORE: Doping report: Corruption ‘embedded’ in IAAF with Lamine Diack running fiefdom
Jamaican sprint king Bolt, the biggest name in athletics with a plethora of titles, records and commercial deals, said the IAAF had failed their athletes.
“When I heard it was quite shocking for me to hear that because as far as I was concerned I think they were doing a good job to clean up the sport,” Bolt said in Kingston after collecting his sixth National Sportsman of the year award.
“So for me to hear something like this was quite shocking and you feel let down as an athlete to be wanting to actually help clean up the sport, and then something like this to come up about the body.
“It's kind of a letdown, so hopefully there's no such thing, but we'll see what happen [with the investigations].”
