Overseas coaches to be checked for drugs links

OVERSEAS coaches recruited to work in British sports are set to be screened to ensure they are not tainted by drugs.

The number of foreign coaches is expected to surge as Britain prepares for the 2012 Olympics in London and anti-doping agency UK Sport are considering how best to look into their backgrounds to check there are no skeletons in the closet.

It follows the case of a Bulgarian, Krassimir Ivanov, who has been given a key coaching role in the British Canoeing Union (BCU), and who was quoted in a Belgian newspaper saying he believes drugs in sport should be legalised to allow a level playing field for all athletes.

Ivanov has claimed the interview has taken his remarks out of context, but UK Sport are demanding he makes clear his attitude to doping and confirms he will not pass on pro-drugs messages to athletes he coaches.

UK Sport chief executive John Scott said: “We need to think about what we’re going to do to give confidence to the system because we know with the number of sports coming into the programme that in order to ensure the best possible performance it will be necessary to recruit overseas coaches.

“We acknowledge we need to look at this to ensure this sort of incident does not happen again. We need to ensure the governing bodies can be confident who they are appointing.”

Ivanov has admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs while canoeing for Bulgaria, but insisted he was told the tablets were vitamins and were administered as part of the system. Such practices were the norm in eastern Europe before the fall of the Iron Curtain and Scott added: “There should be a distinction between those athletes who had a system imposed on them and those who were administering the system.