DAEGU - Senegal's Lamine Diack was overwhelmingly re-elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations yesterday, but vice-president Sergei Bubka needed a controversial second vote to retain his position.
Bubka, the retired world pole vault record holder from Ukraine, had finished fifth and out of the running in the original vote by the governing body's congress. But officials said there had been a technical problem with the voting system and ordered a new vote by hand.
"We looked at each other and said 'what is going on'," said American Robert Hersh. He was re-elected as a vice-president along with Bubka, 2012 London Olympics leader Sebastian Coe and Qatar's Dahlan Al-Hamad with Canadian Abby Hoffman, co-leader of the first vote with Al-Hamad, fifth.
"I looked at that and instinctively thought that just looks ... it looks a bit of a rogue result," Coe said of the first vote.
Bubka picked up 41 votes from the first ballot to the second.