IAAF president may have known about Russian doping scandal

IAAF president Sebastian Coe has been asked to appear for a second time before British legislators looking into corruption in athletics, following fresh evidence regarding his knowledge of a Russian doping scandal.

Coe told a British parliamentary committee in December 2015 that he was unaware of the details of the case, which broke a year earlier while he was serving as vice-president of track and field's governing body.

However, Dave Bedford, the former race director of the London Marathon, told the same committee on Tuesday that he called and emailed Coe in August 2014 to warn him about the scandal. Bedford also said he spoke to Coe about a related matter on Nov. 21, two weeks before German broadcaster ARD reported that senior IAAF officials were extorting money from Russian athletes to bury positive drug tests.

Damian Collins, chairman of the committee, said he would be asking Coe to return to parliament, with the committee believing Bedford's evidence undermined Coe's version of events.

In a statement, the IAAF said Bedford "has offered nothing new to the committee's inquiry" and that its president "has no further information he can provide to the inquiry."

Coe told the British inquiry that he never read an email — or the attached documents — sent by Bedford about the doping blackmail scheme, instead forwarding it to the IAAF ethics body. Bedford said on Tuesday he was "very surprised and quite disappointed" when he heard Coe say that.