Former Athletics Boss Lamine Diack Passes On

Former track federation president Lamine Diack has passed away at the age of 88.This sad event happened at his home in Senegal on Friday.

Diack was at the helm of World Athletics (formerly the International Association of Athletics Federations, IAAF) from 1999 to 2015.

He was also an IOC member between 1999 and 2013 but stood down as an honorary member in 2015 following his arrest in his room at the Sheraton hotel at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.

Diack was sentenced to two years in prison in September 2020 for corruption during his nearly 16-year tenure at the IAAF.

The most notable scandal was a scheme that allowed Russian athletes who paid millions in hush money to keep competing when they should have been suspended for doping.

The court also sentenced Diack to another two years of suspended jail time and fined him 500,000 euros ($590,000).

Due to his age, Diack remained under house arrest in Senegal before being released on bail by a French court.

Senegalese entrepreneur, Cheikh Seck who owns Dakar-based football club AS Jaraaf, paid the 500,000 euro bond earlier this year that allowed Diack to return home.

Diack was also investigated over the award of the World Championships to London in 2015 and to Qatar in 2019 and over the sale of broadcasting rights.