How lucky the track and field athletes had Lamine Diack.

Not that they saw it that way when their long-standing president, just after he had voluntarily stepped down from the top of the association in 2015, was arrested on suspicion of corruption, money laundering and extortion.

They probably also grieved when the old man from Senegal was sentenced to prison and a fine in Paris in September 2020.

In order to be able to end the Diack era, they initiated a profound structural reform and a comprehensive personnel renewal.

The association had to write off a few million euros and even changed its name to erase the memory.

Instead of the IAAF since its founding in 1912, the organization has been called World Athletics since 2019.

When Vladimir Putin's army invaded Ukraine and has been murdering, raping and burning for eight weeks now, sport also faced a huge challenge.

What to do, and above all: what not to do with the Russians?

The answer, to no longer let them play and to give up their sponsors' money, was obvious.

However, to implement this consistently proves to be difficult.

In more than thirty of the forty world federations with Olympic sports, officials from Russia still have something to say.

Even the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which claims to be the morally highest authority in world sport, continues to be represented by the two Russian members Shamil Tarpishchev and Yelena Isinbayeva and the honorary members Vitaly Smirnov and Alexander Popov.

In particular, the former pole-vaulter Isinbayeva proves to be an enthusiastic apologist for Russia's state doctrine and its militarism, in the language of sports: Putin's cheer girl.

The track and field athletes and their president Sebastian Coe, Olympic champion, lord and member of the IOC, don't have the problem.

Diack had supported Russian state doping to such an extent that the country's federation has been suspended since 2015.

World Athletics only had to cancel the starting option for so-called neutral athletes.

The resumption project has been stopped.

No other sport can benefit from such a constellation.

Many are even faced with the task of freeing themselves from Russian influence and weaning themselves off the grants of Russian sponsors and oligarchs.

They have become the playthings of Russian billionaires and tools of Putin's acquisition of influence and prestige.

The horrors of war will not allow a return to pre-attack sports any time soon.

It is inconceivable that the Paris 2024 Olympic Games would feature athletes from Russia, flying their country's flag or not.

At the weekend, Canadian IOC member Richard Pound called for courage and resourcefulness in the expulsion: do not send any invitations to Russia, ask the state to refuse entry to athletes and officials from Russia.

The associations should not shy away from disputes in court;

after all, the Russian attack deprived the sport of its basis.

Track and field athletes, they should figure it out themselves, could use their lead to scrutinize overly close ties to dubious individuals and regimes.

Not that one day developments in the Arab world or in China will catch up with them.