Organizers of London's 2017 World Athletics Championships "want to remove the IAAF’s 'toxic' logo from all their branding and advertising to distance the event from the scandal-ravaged world governing body," according to Ron Lewis of the LONDON TIMES. The event will be in Britain for the first time next August, and officials promoting and selling tickets "are mindful that the sport’s image has taken a battering" after charges former IAAF President Lamine Diack "took bribes to cover-up systemic doping by athletes from Russia and other countries." Organizers are determined not to be "undermined by the scandal." Next year’s event must be billed as the IAAF World Championships but organizers charged with finding sponsors want to drop the IAAF brand and call the event either the “World Athletics Championships” or the “London World Athletics Championships.” An insider said, "The IAAF brand is completely toxic. We want people to talk about the athletes, not the IAAF. In the past they have been very precious about having their logo in the right place and their name all over it. Now is the time to hide it” (LONDON TIMES, 1/29).
POWER PLAY: In London, Martha Kelner wrote the future of London 2017 could be "thrown into chaos" with board members for the event preparing to issue a vote-of-no-confidence in UK Athletics Chair Ed Warner. A source said that there is "increasing concern" that Warner is not the correct person to head up the biggest athletics event to be held in the U.K. since the London Olympics and things are set to come to a head at a board meeting on Friday. Warner is "the highest ranking individual in the sport in Britain and appeared before a Parliamentary culture media and sport select committee into blood doping on Tuesday." He attracted some criticism for "failing to report at the time a story he heard of Qatari officials handing out brown envelopes on the eve of the vote for the 2017 world championships." This is seen as a "potential embarrassment" for London 2017 but the board is also concerned about what it perceives as Warner’s failure to line up a major sponsor with the event less than 18 months away and the sport enduring its "least marketable time in history with its miserable landscape of doping and corruption" (DAILY MAIL, 1/27).
