Why athletics is paying the price

Big names falling foul of doping damages athletics’ image and it shouldn’t just be the athletes who face the consequences, says Katharine Merry

In so many ways, July was an excellent month for the world of athletics. It began with a fitting 50th anniversary edition of the Prefontaine Classic that served up a healthy portion of world record-breaking, as well as a large serving of top-level competition.

There were more positives to feast on at the London Diamond League meeting, too, as the star names put on a show – Charlie Dobson’s 400m win was brilliant, wasn’t it? – to send the sell-out 60,000 crowd home more than happy. That same day had also delivered the very welcome news that the UK government is backing the bid to bring the World Championships back to London in 2029 and, although few fans will have noticed, UK Athletics attracted a new headline sponsor – Novuna – meaning that the governing body’s coffers will receive a much-needed boost. Oh and you can also add a new TV deal with the BBC to the list.

Magazine deadlines mean I’m writing this just before all of the national championships and trials that will decide the teams for the World Championships in Tokyo but, at the moment, there is also the sense that the outcome of quite a few events will be hard to predict this year. There’s more jeopardy, both domestically and worldwide, which is exactly what we want as we approach the business end of the season.

It would be such a welcome change if the sport could have a little period of being able to sail along quite nicely like that without any unwanted distractions or developments but, of course, that’s not how the world works and it seems there’s always something around the corner.

This time, that “something” happened just before the London meeting, when news broke that the women’s marathon world record-holder Ruth Chepn’getich had been provisionally suspended after testing positive for a banned substance. While it didn’t come as an enormous surprise – unfortunately, it only felt like a matter of time before this happened – it was still a kick in the teeth for the sport.

There’s a reason why her world record of 2:09:56 at Chicago was greeted with scepticism rather than celebration by the athletics community back in October. It just didn’t seem entirely believable. As I wrote in these pages at the time, whenever there is a breakthrough like that I go through a checklist of credibility…