POSTED: November 3rd 2010

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NEIL WILSON: Why it's overdue time to put women's world records straight

THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Nov 03: To the best of my knowledge and memory, reinforced by a study of the internet, Annegret Richter, the 1976 Olympic 100 metres champion, has never admitted to doping. Indeed, in an interview as recent as 2008, she has denied it.

So her comment in an interview with the German news agency SID that she supports the case for world records to be returned to zero is odd. But whatever her motives, her view deserves support.

Today’s generation of women athletes are rightly frustrated.  While men enjoy the celebrity that comes from breaking world records – think Usain Bolt and David Rudisha recently – there is no hope for them. Not without resorting to the use of illegal substances.

Only two men’s records survive from the 1980s. That is an acceptable number; the exceptional talents which prove the rule.

Thirteen women’s world records survive in the IAAF official list; that is a quite unacceptable number which proves what we all believe – that the doping available then benefited women significantly more than it did men.

Is it reasonable to assume, given improvements over 30 years in science, coaching and nutrition, that the talented likes of Sanya Richards has never come within 1.1sec of the 400m world record?

Or that no modern woman has been within a second of the 800m record? Or that the only woman who came within a stride’s length of the 100m record soon turned out to have been doped herself?

Doping admission

Two German women went further than Richter and asked for their names to be removed from records.  Ines Geipel admitted to doping and wanted nothing further to do with the world club record for 4x100m. This year Gesine Tettenborn (nee Walther) asked the DLV to take her name off the national 4x400 metres record that was once a world record for the same reason of conscience.

Good for them. Sadly, the IAAF declined the chance at the turn of the millennium to turn the clock and measures back to zero, an opportunity to use a momentous moment in time to rid future generations of the burden of history.

It is not too late. The IAAF has changed world records for technical reasons in the past. The javelin and combined events records spring to mind. Everyone soon adjusted to the new marks and for a time there was the fresh stimulus to the events of new world records.

Perhaps the next moment that presents itself will be the change in the IAAF presidency, whether that is 2011 or 2015. A bold initiative for the new man (or woman) to stamp their mark and reinvigorate the sport.

NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books   

Keywords · Neil Wilson · world records · IAAF

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