British middle-distance great Sebastian Coe has said the creation of an independent anti-doping agency in athletics can help the sport in its battle against drug cheats.
Coe, a candidate for the presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the sport's global governing body, said such an independent body would ease the workload of both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and national athletics associations.
"For many federations this is a very onerous burden," Coe told international news agency reporters in a conference call on Wednesday, as he again insisted the IAAF was fully committed to weeding out blood doping and other forms of drug cheating, contrary to recent media allegations.
"It is costly it ties them up often in expensive litigation," said Coe.
"You guys (the press) sit there not really understanding and quite rightly, questioning, the speed and length of time it takes between a positive sample and a sanction.
"It is really important we close down at every opportunity the perception that in some way what we are doing is mired in conflict."
Coe, the Olympic 1500m champion at both the 1980 and 1984 Games, is standing against Ukrainian former pole-vaulter Sergey Bubka in the race to succeed Lamine Diack as IAAF president, with an election scheduled for August 19 on the eve of the World Championships in Beijing.
The vote comes against the backdrop of allegations made by Britain's Sunday Times newspaper and German broadcaster ARD that, based on a leak from the IAAF database, a third of medals in endurance races at Olympics and world champions from 2001-2012 had been won by athletes with suspicious blood readings.
