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NEW WORLD CUP FORMAT ANNOUNCED AS IAAF COUNCIL MEETING CONCLUDES IN MONACO - rrw
Published by
Nov 23rd 2008, 2:40pm
NEW WORLD CUP FORMAT ANNOUNCED AS IAAF COUNCIL MEETING CONCLUDES IN MONACO
By Bob Ramsak (c) 2008 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission
MONTE
CARLO, Monaco – A new format for the IAAF World Cup, the possible
inclusion of cross country into the Olympic program and the high
profile mid-summer suspensions of leading Russian athletes were among
the key topics discussed at the two-day meeting of the IAAF Council
which concluded today in Monte Carlo.
The new setup unveiled for
the quadrennial World Cup, the IAAF’s only international track and
field team competition, features a dramatic shift from the format in
use since the meet’s inception in 1977. The new format, which will be
introduced at its next edition in Split, Croatia, in September 2010,
will consist of four continental teams, representing Africa, the
Americas, Australasia, and Europe, with two athletes per team in each
individual event, and three athletes in the 1500m, 3000m, 5000m and
3000m steeplechase. Additionally, only an overall combined men’s and
women’s champion will be crowned.
Precisely how the teams will
be picked and who will lead the teams has yet to be ironed out, but the
consensus, based upon feedback from athletes, media and the public,
said IAAF spokesman Nick Davies, was that the competition is worth
continuing, albeit with a significant facelift.
- Cross Country in the Winter Olympic Games?
That’s
an admittedly unlikely scenario backed by IAAF president Lamine Diack.
Earlier this year, Haile Gebreselassie, Kenenisa Bekele and Paul Tergat
wrote a letter to International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge
requesting that cross country, last contested in the Olympics in 1924,
be returned to the Olympic program. Diack followed up their request
with a letter of his own to Rogge, backing the measure.
The
IOC’s initial reply was that any sports on the winter program must be
contested on “snow or ice”. But adding the footraces to the summer
Games is out of the question, Diack said, since the inclusion of new
events would require the cutting of others from the track and field
program.
- Challenge to Russian Federation Over Timing of High Profile Suspensions?
The
IAAF will decide by November 26 whether to challenge the All Russia
Athletics Federation over the timing of doping suspensions handed down
to six athletes on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games.
The
group of suspended athletes, which includes two-time world 1500m
champion Tatyana Tomashova and Yelena Soboleva, who lost her 2008 world
indoor title and world record in the 1500 due to her doping bust, were
found guilty of manipulating and substituting urine tests following a
year-long investigation by the global governing body.
Russian
athletics authorities back-dated the start of the bans to April and May
2007, corresponding with the athletes' initial positive tests, contrary
to IAAF rules which state that athletes are deemed ineligible from the
date they were first suspended.
Whether the decision will be
challenged will be decided next week, said Diack, a member of the three
member Doping Review Board this is studying the case.
Pierre
Weiss, the IAAF’s General Secretary, suggested that the decision could
also include a recommendation to increase the length of the suspensions
from two years to four.
“If we go to CAS there are two
questions,” said Weiss, who is not a member of the review board. “The
date of the start of the suspension, and also the duration of the
suspension.”
“We could ask for four years,” Weiss said. “We don’t consider this just a doping offense. It’s (even worse) cheating.”
Following
its targeted investigation, which included DNA analysis for the first
time, the IAAF presented their findings to the All Russia Athletics
Federation in June, which then held its own hearings on the matter. A
third test of each athlete, conducted in late July, confirmed the
initial findings, leading to the provisional suspensions on the eve of
the Beijing Games.
“We had to speed up the process,” Weiss said,
to avoid the possibility of medal winning athletes later testing
positive on the sport’s biggest stage. “We had to send a message to
athletes that we are actively looking for those who cheat.”
Key
future competition dates and venues were also decided. The 2010 World
Athletics Final will take place in Rabat, Morocco, on September 11-12,
the first time that the season-capping event in its present form will
be contested outside of Europe. The 2010 World Half Marathon
Championships will be held in Nanning, China, on October 9, and the
2011 edition of the World Youth Championships will take place in Lille,
France.
ENDS
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