Athletics crisis worse than football´s – Johnson

Legendary athlete Michael Johnson believes the corruption crisis engulfing athletics is worse than the one experienced by football governing body FIFA.

An independent commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released the second part of a report into corruption in athletics last week, in which it said “corruption was embedded” within the IAAF and that members of its council must have known about the extent of doping in athletics.

It was also claimed by investigator Dick Pound that athletes from Russia and Turkey who failed drugs tests paid bribes to cover up the results, while former IAAF president Lamine Diack is currently under investigation amid allegations he received payments to cover up failed drugs tests from Russian athletes.

Football’s governing body is going through a similar crisis, with its president Sepp Blatter and UEFA counterpart Michel Platini banned for eight years due to a £1.3million payment made to Platini in 2011,  

But former sprinter Johnson, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, says Athletics has a bigger problem telling BBC Sport: “If you think about the victims, it is absolutely worse.

“It is the governing body – and the very structure of the governing body – that has allowed this type of corruption.”

Russia has been banned from competing in international competitions by the IAAF, and there have been calls from some to reset all world records.

However, Johnson does not believe that will bring about clean competition.

“It doesn’t make sense to me how a reset of all the world records is going to deal with the issue of people cheating,” he added.

“It doesn’t create a clean competition and that does not deter anyone from cheating.”