The media has turned athletics into a monster, says outgoing IAAF president Lamine Diack

Eighty-two-year-old laments public opinion being swayed by recent negative coverage in final official address

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IAAF president Lamine Diack makes his final address at the 50th IAAF Congress in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 11:30am, 19 Aug 2015Updated: 12:31pm, 19 Aug 2015

World athletics boss Lamine Diack opened the meeting which will choose his successor on Wednesday with a defiant stab at track and field’s doping detractors, saying they had painted the sport as a “monster”.

We have the world championships here in Beijing and people will say 80 per cent of the athletes are bound to test positive

Lamine Diack

Diack, 82, is stepping down as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) after 16 years in charge, with Sergey Bubka and Sebastian Coe later facing off in a vote of the 214 member federations to take over.

IAAF has been mired in recent weeks over allegations of widespread doping in the sport, but Diack was in defiant form as he took to the dais for one last time in his current role.

“We have the world championships here in Beijing and people will say 80 per cent of the athletes are bound to test positive. That’s absolutely not true,” he said.

“All champions need to be tested regularly,” he said, citing the establishment of the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) which cut down on the number of positive tests that came to light in the United States in the 1990s.

“If all countries followed that example, in Kenya, Morocco, Ethiopia and Turkey, and elsewhere, it will enable us to resolve this problem.”

Ukrainian former pole vaulting legend Sergei Bubka (left) and British track legend Sebastian Coe go head-to-head for presidency of the IAAF in Beijing today. Photo: AFP

Diack added: “We spend millions of dollars every year to ensure athletes are protected and remain clean.

“For weeks, people are talking about doping in athletics, the sport has turned into a monster in the eyes of newspapers, saying everyone is doped.