Olympia: Prokop: Olympic approval by WADA instead of IOC

Clemens Prokop has prepared for his upcoming departure as President of the German Athletics Association (DLV) with a sensational push to combat doping and simultaneously deprive the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of power.

The lawyer wants to have the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and no longer the IOC decide on the admission of athletes to the Olympic Games. In this context, the effectiveness of anti-doping measures in individual countries is to be a further criterion for approval in addition to athletic qualification.

“Where there is no adequate control system, one cannot, like the IOC in the case of Russia, seek blame from individual athletes,”explained the outgoing head of DLV, who left office in November, in an interview with the Rheinische Post (Friday edition):”The WADA should have the opportunity to refuse participation in the Olympics for such countries. Qualification for the Olympic Games would have to be regulated not only by sporting performance, but also by the existence of a functioning anti-doping system and a minimum number of controls. Then many things would change quickly, I’m sure of it.”

Prokop does not expect to see any progress under the current conditions, which mean that the IOC as the organizer has sole decision-making power over the start of Olympic competitions.

“As long as it is possible for countries to participate in the Olympic Games without difficulty, even though their anti-doping systems do not comply with international standards, we will have unfair competition conditions,”said the 60-year-old.

Prokop also called for the ISTAF meeting in Berlin to be upgraded to become part of the Diamond League. Commitment to the event’s promotion to the elite series of the IAAF World Association of Athletics Associations is “based on the tradition of the ISTAF and is almost a mandatory task for the athletics location Germany”, he said.

At present, the ISTAF in Berlin, where the European Championships will take place in 2018, is only one of the meetings of the second-rate World Challenge series.