Coe: IAAF's path to gaining trust to be difficult

"The journey back to trust will take far longer and will be a painful process," Sebastian Coe, the IAAF president, said after the release of a new report by the World Anti-Doping Agency on how the International Association of Athetics Federations handled doping by Russian athletes. "We can't sit here begging for trust. We have to show by every action that we take that we earn that trust."

IAAF President Sebastian Coe was backed by the WADA report to head the body in its rehabilitation.

The IAAF faces a long and painful mission to get over the doping and corruption scandal engulfing athletics' ruling body, its president Sebastien Coe told AFP on Thursday.

"The journey back to trust will take far longer and will be a painful process," Coe said after the release of a new report by the World Anti-Doping Agency on how the International Association of Athetics Federations handled doping by Russian athletes. "We can't sit here begging for trust. We have to show by every action that we take that we earn that trust."

Despite accusing the IAAF of being aware of corruption orchestrated by its former leader Lamine Diack, the report's author Richard Pound backed Coe to lead reforms of the world body.

"Many of the recommendations that are contained in the report today we will look at very, very closely and when we think we can and we should absorb them into our own reform process, we will," Coe pledged.

"I'm very, very grateful to the independent commission for the work they've have done, it has been diligent, it has been done thoroughly and it has actually helped us in our own reform process," he added.