World athletics has been thrown into chaos after leaks of confidential data revealed that a third of the medals in Olympic and world championship endurance races from 2001-2012 were won by by runners with suspicious blood.
The Jamaican world sprint champion Usain Bolt. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Britain's Sunday Times and the German broadcaster ARD said they had obtained the secret data from world athletics' governing body the IAAF, supplied by a whistleblower "disgusted" by the extent of doping.
The news organisations said they had shown the data to two experts, who concluded that track and field endurance events were in the same dire state as cycling had been at the peak of a doping scandal that nearly destroyed that sport, when American Lance Armstrong was stripped of seven Tour de France victories.
The Australian doping expert Doctor Robin Parisotto, who reviewed the data, told the Sunday Times he'd never seen such an alarmingly abnormal set of blood values. More than 800 of the athletes had recorded one or more "abnormal" results.
Pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia celebrates after winning. Note: she is not implicated in the latest doping claims. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Russia accounted for more than half the most suspicious results.
The IAAF did not immediately address the substance of the reports but said it was preparing a response, and noted they were based on confidential information obtained without permission.
The World Anti-Doping Agency, a separate body set up in 1999 to coordinate doping investigations across global sport, said it was "very disturbed".
WADA said results were clean for a number of top athletes, including Britain's 2012 Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah, the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and British heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill.
ARD, who last December aired similar accusations of doping and corruption in Russia, returned to the controversy just three weeks out from the World Championships in Beijing.
"Despite assurances from the Russian authorities (in favour of a clean sport) doped competitors and their suppliers are always protected," the public broadcaster said in a statement.
The makers of the film say that a hidden camera recorded 800m athlete Anastasia Bazdireva as praising the benefits of drugs.
"With anabolics, I have stiff muscles. But I can run. It's hard but it's OK. You feel different with anabolics," she is recorded as claiming.
Dick Pound, the former head of world anti-doping agency WADA, said the latest allegations were worrying.
"If all of this is true, then the problem is certainly more significant that what has been admitted so far," he said.
ARD journalists also said that they had been given access by an anonymous source to a database of 12,000 drug test results taken from around 5000 athletes between 2001 to 2012.
Results were examined by Australian haematologist Michael Ashenden.
"According to him, these tests leave no doubt over the fact that endurance disciplines at Olympics and world championships were contaminated by doping," added the ARD statement.
Journalists also returned to Kenya where they claim another hidden camera showed injections of "dangerous" doping products being administered.
The programme claimed that there is "massive corruption" within the Kenyan set-up and "a desire to cover-up doping... to the summit of the Kenyan athletics federation".
Kenya was rocked this year when marathon star Rita Jeptoo was banned for two years after being caught doping with the banned blood-boosting hormone EPO.
"Since 2006, I have not been forced to do a single blood test in Kenya," the 34-year-old is quoted as saying by ARD, adding that only urine tests were carried out.
After ARD's first expose into doping at the end of 2014, Russian Athletics Federation president Valentin Balakhnichev was axed from his job as treasurer of the International Association of Athletics Federations.
In February he quit as president of the Russian body.
In the furore that followed, the Russian federation said it was intending to sue ARD over their doping allegations.