This tweet claims that the International Association for Athletics Federation (IAAF) has announced new marathon race rules. Part of the post reads, “Medals will now be awarded to the best non-East African runners alongside the overall winners.”
“We want to encourage diversity in our sport. East African runners have natural advantages, and we hope this motivates others to challenge their supremacy,” read an alleged statement by IAAF’s president, Sebastian Coe.
These claims say that Eliud Kipchoge, opposed these rules, arguing that it is unfair to East Africans.
Background
World Athletics, formerly the IAAF is the official world track and field athletics organisation’s ratifying body. The council has the responsibility of making decisions related to athletics including; rules and regulations, and selecting host cities for world athletics events among other related roles.
Verification
Going by a Google search with ‘IAAF Rule East-African Runners,’ this publication by PostaMate comes up. The publication shares the same claim. In fact, the tweet was shared on October 13, 2023, five days after this publication. It alleges that the decision to start awarding non-East African runners resulted from complaints by runners from other countries who felt that they had no chance of competing with the dominant East African athletes especially those from Kenya and Ethiopia.
Posta Mate describes itself as a satirical website, across a number of its social media handles, that is; Twitter and Facebook. In fact, its tagline reads, ‘Home of satire and sarcasm.’
Additionally, the latest press releases by IAAF for the months of September and October do not feature any updates regarding these new rules, nor do the federation’s competition & technical rules. The latest updates regarding these rules were amendments made in May 2023.
Verdict
Claims that the World Athletics has reviewed rules for non-East African runners are FALSE.
This fact check was published by Piga Firimbi with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.
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