BEIJING, Aug 14: Athletics could end up with a reputation like American football unless it wins its battle against doping, Sebastian Coe, vice-president of the IAAF, said on Thursday on the eve of the track and field events.

Athletics has been hit hard by doping busts in the past few years, including 2000 Olympic champion Marion Jones’ confession that she used drugs for years without getting caught.

This week the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) removed the 4x400m world relay record after Antonio Pettigrew, one of the US team who set the record in 1998, admitted doping. Seven Russian athletes were also barred from the Games because of doping-related offences.

“I don’t kid myself that it will always be thus, but most people recognise that what they are watching is being done by athletes who may have from time to time have entered the moral maze but have come out the right side,” Coe, a double Olympic gold medallist in 1500m, told reporters.

“But we have to be mindful that that is not sustainable forever. You’ll end up with what’s happened in the States where most parents don’t want their kids to play American Football.

“Parents want to know that their children are not in a predatory environment, that there is a moral framework that provides a firewall between the sleazy chemist in a Californian, British or Russian laboratory,” Coe added.

Coe, who was opposed to disgraced British sprinter Dwain Chambers’ High Court bid to overturn a British Olympic Association ruling that bans former doping cheats from future Olympic Games, said he hoped there were no major drug busts in Beijing but said it was not an “ideal world”.

“The IAAF tests more than any other sport, we don’t brush our positive tests under the carpet,” he said. “Sometimes that is bloody uncomfortable.”

Coe also said track and field needed to broaden its appeal to young people.

“We have some really big challengers,” he stated. “The average age of people watching track and field in my own country is late 50s. We have had difficulty engaging a new generation.”

Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 Olympic organising committee, is preparing to take over the Olympic baton from Beijing’s organisers at next Sunday’s closing ceremony.—Reuters