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World Athletics has added seven countries to its watch list, they are Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkey and Uzbekistan.
World Athletics feels that there is a high degree of risk of results manipulation within the Member Federation’s territory and not the conduct of individual officials or specific cases. Any conduct-related matters will be referred to the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for investigation.
World Athletics will not recognize results achieved at competitions hosted by these Federations, except for the following:
- Official international or area championships
- Competitions which form part of the following international competition structures:
Diamond League
Continental Tour
World Indoor Tour
World Race Walking Tour
World Combined Events Tour
World Cross Country Tour
World Athletics Label Road Races - National championships, provided certain conditions are fulfilled and subject to World Athletics approval.
The World Athletics Council approved the introduction of a Competition Manipulation Watch List at its meeting in Oregon in July, in response to an AIU investigation prompted by 17 reports of suspicious competition results during the qualification period for the 2021 Olympic Games.
The World Athletics Competition Department will work with Member Federations that are placed on the Watch List to improve and reform their competition procedures.
Their position on the Watch List will be kept under review by the Council with the aim of those Member Federations being able to demonstrate that they should no longer remain on the Watch List. All seven federations have already engaged positively with World Athletics in that regard.
Reallocations due to age manipulations
World Athletics has annulled the results of 11 athletes from World Athletics Series events between 2001 and 2013 due to age manipulation.
The athletes have been stripped of their performances, and the medals have been reallocated.
Nine of the athletes have been identified as overage at the time of the competitions in which they competed, and two athletes have been identified as underage.
Investigations have led to the reallocation of medals in the men’s 110 metres hurdles at the 2002 World Junior Championships that took place in Kingston, Jamaica. Shi Dongpeng of China has been disqualified, while Shamar Sands of The Bahamas was awarded the silver medal and Richard Phillips of Jamaica was awarded the bronze medal.
Eritrean Awet Nftalem Kibrab, Ethiopia’s Dawoodi, Sultan Abdulmajeed Al-Hebshi, Ismail Al-Sabani, and Ali Ahmad S. Al-Amri were also all found to be overage.
Saudi Arabia’s Ahmed Nezar H. Al-Sharfa has been disqualified from the men’s long jump at the 2003 World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, QC in Canada, with Andrejs Maskancevs of Latvia now presented with the bronze medal.
And Saudi Arabia is also disqualified from the men’s medley relay from the 2005 World Youth Championships from Marrakech, Morroco. South Africa has now been awarded the bronze medal.
And there were others.
