by Our Sports Desk

Athletics president Seb Coe is in favour of erasing world records in international athletics set by suspected drugs cheats, according to UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner yesterday.

UK Athletics has announced a campaign for clean athletics including resetting every single world record due to the sport’s drugs crisis and says it will seek to bring in a lifetime ban for any athlete guilty of a serious drugs violation.

Warner said he spoke to Coe and that the president of international athletics had told him he favoured erasing some individual records instead.

Suspicious world records include the women’s 200m time of 21.34 seconds set by Florence Griffiths-Joyner in 1988, the men’s shot-put by United States’s Randy Barnes in 1990 — he was later banned for life for steroids — and the women’s 400 metres record set in 1985 by East Germany’s Marita Koch.

Koch never tested positive but East Germany ran a state-organised doping system and data released in 1992 suggested she was among many athletes who had doped. There were also big suspicions surrounding Griffiths-Joyner, who died suddenly aged 38.

Warner said: “I met Seb Coe today and he told me he is in favour of picking off those records that are clearly wrong.

“If he can do that, then wonderful and let’s get on with it. We believe all world records should be reset once the necessary measures have been brought in.

“We have the situation now where the 1990 men’s shot-put record is still held by someone who was banned for life.

“The difficulty is picking which records are wrong — for example Flo-Jo never failed a drugs test. But there are many records which are simply unachievable by today’s standards.”

Warner added that world records should not be allowed to stand if set by anyone guilty of a serious doping violation.

The British Olympic Association was defeated when it went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2012 to try to maintain its lifetime ban for drugs cheats but Warner said he is prepared to go to court again for UK Athletics to ban for life those guilty of serious doping violations.

“I don’t think it is unachievable,” said Warner.

“We want to see what we can do. If we have this fight to try to protect our clean athletes, then I would rather fail than not try at all.”

UK Athletics has published “A Manifesto for Clean Athletics” after the drugs scandal that has seen Russia banned from international athletics, with allegations that former athletics officials also took money to cover up positive tests from Turkish and Moroccan athletes.