Not all 800 suspicious blood tests suggest cheating but action needed

Athletics' governing body needs to take action to investigate a report that some 800 elite athletes returned suspicious or abnormal results for doping between 2001 and 2012, a leading expert said on Monday.

Robin Parisotto was one of two experts who reviewed 12,000 blood tests undertaken by the IAAF and leaked to the Sunday Times and the German broadcaster ARD by a whistleblower.

"There were 800-odd abnormal or suspicious results but not all of those would have been truly indicative of doping," Parisotto told Reuters, citing potential influences such as the timing of tests, altitude and testing conditions.

"But there were values that were ... quite extreme and even taking into consideration confounding factors, there was really no disputing what that data was telling us," said Parisotto, who developed the blood tests used to detect performance-enhancing EPO and blood transfusions.