Edwards criticises treatment of Yegorova

Britain's Jonathan Edwards has attacked the double standards in athletics that led to the persecution of women's 5,000 metres…

Britain's Jonathan Edwards has attacked the double standards in athletics that led to the persecution of women's 5,000 metres champion Olga Yegorova at the World Championships in Canada.

The gold medal-winning triple jumper said the Russian, who tested positive for the banned substance EPO but was subsequently 'cleared' on a technicality, was an easy target.

He even suggested that had it been a British athlete, a campaign would have been launched declaring that person's innocence.

His opinion is in stark contrast to Great Britain women's team captain Paula Radcliffe, who made a very public trackside protest in Edmonton with a banner stating: 'EPO cheats out'.

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But Edwards, in his column in The Times, said: "I wonder what the reaction would have been if she was a Canadian or, heaven forbid, a British athlete.

"She [Yegorova] cannot speak English and is an athletic nobody without powerful allies to lobby on her behalf.

"But perhaps the real nail in her coffin is her nationality. She has suffered from guilt by association, linked in our minds to the systematic doping by the Soviet Union".

"I actually felt sorry for her," said Edwards. "I feel she has been harshly and unfairly treated and there has been little dispassionate debate on the issue because nobody wishes to be appear to be giving tacit approval to drug-taking".

PA