[Devongone]

Assuming today's further revelations IAAF are as disastrous as expected I can understand the idea of opening a new book of World Records. There's no woman who can run close to Marita Koch' s 400 metre time or Flo-Jo in the 100/200 ........ but those times happened. They are part of the sport's history. The drugs happened. Don't we need to be open about that, not close off the past?

Wouldn't the solution be just to asterisk all the suspect records and include alongside them what we consider the true world best?

The danger is if we simply start a new record book ....... imagine if Usain Bolt comes up injured this season. His records become part of a discredited past and the runner most likely to set the new record will be the convicted drug cheat Justin Gatlin. What a way to start.

Equally starting a new record book when you haven't the means to detect or prevent state-sponsored, coach-facilitated or medically-aided cheating seems foolhardy. Won't we just be scrapping an old set of bent records for a new one?

[St Charles Owl]

At the end of the day the victims in all of this are the athletes who won things and set records without the use of drugs, they were the ones who missed out on medals due to being beaten by a drug cheat. If you reset all the records then the clean athletes who did set records (and there are plenty of them) would once again be the ones who get penalized. The sport just has to move on, remove the records and medals of the ones known to have cheated and do a better job of policing the athletes with regards to drugs.

[ritchiebaby]

Spot on, SCO, although the idea of starting a new record book is so stupid, it'll probably be adopted.

[Devongone]

The frustration of all those years of hard winter training, gym work, trackwork resulting in only a fourth place at the Olympics behind a couple of runners you were sure had taken drugs would only seem more pointless if another athlete everyone admired as clean now had to have his records reset to zero ........ because no one could tell the cheat records from the clean. And then someone everyone suspected came through and set the new best ........ Oh how we'll cheer, not.

Just as a side issue, they offer big money for breaking a world record at Diamond League meets. All that money that rewards clean performers, as well as dirty, producing something amazing ..... to what will they reduce it when the record has only been around three months ...... and how excited will the crowd be at having seen a best set a couple of months after the record started?

You are as, ritchiebaby says, spot on SCO.

[Lord Snooty]

There should be two separate associations. One for the clean athletes and one for those who openly want to ruin their bodies with substances that could endanger their lives.
The druggies can have all the money events and the clean athletes can go back to the old values like amateur status and view life from the high moral ground while the druggies wallow in wealth but also in self loathing and the fact that nobody loves them.

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Read a letter the other day on Facebook, probably originally from Viz. It said; Respect to Lance Armstrong for winning all those bicycle races while on drugs. I couldn't even find my bike when I was on drugs.