Kelly Sotherton: Olympic medallist calls for event changes not world record reset

Kelly Sotherton says athletics chiefs should consider tweaking events rather than rewriting existing world records.

The 40-year-old won Olympic heptathlon bronze for Britain in 2004 and has been upgraded to two more bronze medals from 2008 after retrospective drug tests.

All world records set before 2005 could be rewritten under a new proposal from European Athletics, after the sport's latest doping scandal.

Sotherton said tweaking events would create "a new slate" and new records.

She said: "Could we go back to yards or run 101m instead of 100m?

"We all know that some of the records are completely out there. But not all of those records were achieved by people who cheated.

"Scrapping those records is unfair on those athletes. And what about my pre-2005 performances? Did they happen? Does this apply to national records too?"

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Sotherton referred to the IAAF's decision to remodel the men's javelin in 1986.

Changes were made to the javelin's design because of increasingly frequent flat landings. All existing records were reset after the change, but not erased.

"I am open to the discussion - for the greater good of the sport it's a good thing," she added.