Voting confusion forces IAAF to new vote

Lamine Diack's re-election to a new term as president of the IAAF today is overshadowed by the nullification of the poll for the vice-presidential panel after Sergey Bubka was initially voted off.

DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA // Lamine Diack's re-election to a new term as president of the IAAF today was overshadowed by the nullification of the poll for the vice-presidential panel after Sergey Bubka was initially voted off.

After 200 federations voted to give the 78-year-old Diack a 173-27 mandate for a new term as head of athletics's governing body, the electronic system came up with wrong figures for the election of treasurer and also cast doubt upon the vice presidential vote.

In the initial poll, the former pole vaulting great Bubka was voted off the panel, with Qatar's Dahlan Al Hamad, the United Kingdom's Sebastian Coe, Canada's Abby Hoffman and Robert Hersh of the United States going through.

"The system doesn't work," Bubka said. "It is clear you can see, in both cases for vice president and for treasurer."

The result was annulled, and a second vote was scheduled for later today. Bubka had long been seen as a rising star in the administration of the sport and the exclusion of the Ukrainian as vice president would be a shock.

Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Olympic organisation, is seen as a chief rival for Bubka to replace Diack, once the Senegalese steps down. It is widely expected that this will be his last term, which will run to 2015.

Diack said that the effect of the global financial crisis on the sport and increasing competition from sports like football are among the major challenges ahead.

He told the sport's congress ahead of Saturday's opening of the world championships that "the challenges are tough".

Congress heard a financial report saying that since the previous championships in Berlin two years ago, costs had to be cut by over 20 per cent, from US$67 million (Dh246m) to US$52m (Dh191m).

"The essentials of our activities survived," said the outgoing treasurer Jean Poczobut said.

The IAAF says 88 per cent of its income is derived from marketing and televisions rights sales, and both have suffered from the global financial crisis.