The UK Parliament’s Culture, Media & Sport (CMS) Select Committee announced it will question Sebastian Coe, President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on 2 December, as part of its ongoing inquiry into blood doping in athletics. On 8 September, the CMS Committee launched an inquiry into allegations that the IAAF failed to follow up on a database of suspicious blood values uncovered by journalist Hajo Seppelt.

It is understood that the CMS Committee is keen to question Coe, who was IAAF Vice President from 2007, over allegations that the IAAF covered up blood doping by elite athletes. In an interview (featured below), Channel 4’s Jon Snow questioned Coe on whether he either knew about what was going on at the IAAF, or should have known.

On 8 September, the CMS Committee published a study (featured below) by the University of Tübingen for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which the CMS Committee considers was ‘blocked’ by the IAAF. The prevalence study, which used the randomised response method, found that between 29% and 45% of 2,163 elite athletes confessed to doping during the past year (2011).

The venue for the CMS Committee hearing has yet to be fixed. The IAAF will today decide whether to suspend the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) through a meeting conducted via teleconference from London at 19:00 CET, after the WADA Independent Commission appointed to look into allegations of systemic Russian doping found that the IAAF and ARAF had conspired to hide Russian doping.