KINGSTON (Jamaica) • Usain Bolt is shocked and feels let down by the scandal-hit International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), but the Jamaican sprinter is 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 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.
Yesterday, the nation's newly elected track chief, Dmitry Shlyakhtin, who is sports minister of Russia's Samara region, vowed to clean up athletics and said his priority is to ensure Russian sportsmen and women compete at this year's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Bolt, the biggest name in athletics with a plethora of titles, records and commercial deals, said on Friday that the IAAF had failed its athletes.
"When I heard (about it) it was quite shocking because I thought they were doing a good job to clean up the sport," he said in Kingston after collecting his sixth National Sportsman of the Year award.
"You feel let down as an athlete as actually you want them to help clean up the sport. We'll see what happen (with the investigations)."
UK Athletics (UKA) released A Manifesto For Clean Athletics on Monday, calling for world records to be wiped clean and drug cheats to be banned for at least eight years in radical proposals aimed at heralding in a new era for the sport.
The 29-year-old Bolt, who set the 100m and 200m world records of 9.58 and 19.19 seconds in 2009 and shared in the 4x100m mark of 36.84sec in 2012, is against the proposal.
"As far as I'm concerned it's really pointless," said the 11-time world championship gold medallist.
"What's done is done, you have to just move forward and try to make the upcoming championships and Olympics and the next (world) records as best as we can and just look forward to the future.
"You can't worry about the past, but try to build on the future."
REUTERS
