FORMER British athletics head coach Charles van Commenee believes medal targets are becoming meaningless in the wake of the doping scandal engulfing London 2012.
The outspoken Dutchman led the athletics team to glory at the London Games with six gongs including four gold medals — three on Super Saturday.
But he still quit his job having set a personal target of eight medals for the team including a solitary gold.
He replaced Dave Collins who was SACKED after the Beijing Games when he failed to meet a target of five medals instead winning just four at the time.
But Goldie Sayers is now set to be up-graded to bronze in the javelin with Martyn Rooney and his 4x400m team-mates also on course for bronze after Russian athletes were among 31 found doping when samples from EIGHT years ago were re-tested.
That brings the tally to six already.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) chiefs also revealed last week that 23 athletes from five sports who competed at London 2012 had tested positive using improved techniques on 265 targeted samples.
This is in addition to the 38 already caught out over the past four years — just three during the Games themselves — under new testing systems.
Anti-doping experts are now allowed to store and re-test samples for up to ten years, tracking any changes under a new biological passport system.
It means that over the next six years Van Commenee could discover — like Collins before him — that the team had met his targets.
In addition some sports such as swimming saw their funding cut by millions after London 2012 because they missed out on medals.
And he admitted he wouldn’t put his job on the line now like he did in London 2012 — or advise other coaches to do the same — knowing the extent of doping at the Games.
He said: “In principle I’m in favour of setting targets because there is accountability. It also gives you justification for how you use your resources.
“But these reasons are now questionable and I hate it. If there is no justification for using targets for Rio the thinking becomes meaningless.
“I feel very sorry for Dave Collins. It’s heartbreaking. People forget that coaches have lost jobs as a result of doping and medal targets.
“There are a lot of consequences. There are so many things about elite sport that become meaningless when people take the mickey with doping.
“It takes the credibility away, the fun away... It’s undermining the whole sport.”
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Van Commenee, now performance director for the Dutch Olympic Committee, said: “It might turn out in a few years that we DID get eight medals or more at London 2012.
“Would I have stayed had I known that? It’s a hypothetical question which I can’t answer. I can only stick to the answer I gave prior to the Games.
“I wanted to see the results, then take a break before deciding what to do in my life. My contract expired and there were a lot of factors to consider.
“When I started the job I said I would resign if we didn’t meet my own target. I wanted to make a statement to shake the sport up.
“In order to do that I had to make myself accountable. At that time our sport had gone to sleep and needed shaking up.
“I put my own destiny on the line but I don’t believe I should be an example to any other performance director.
“I wouldn’t do it now. It would be silly now — knowing everything we know now. We don’t know what we are dealing with anymore.”
Van Commenee still believes the biggest victims of the doping scandal are the athletes who have missed out on medals during their career because of the cheats — including the likes of 800m star Jenny Meadows.
He said: “I feel most sorry for the athletes who missed out. Jenny Meadows — how many medals has she lost? Four? Five?
“Plus missing out on lottery funding because she failed to reach a global final at the expense of someone who went on to test positive.
“Jenny Meadows would have lived a different life now. Goldie Sayers too but for those criminals.
“And we’re only talking about the athletes they have targeted from Beijing and London who are sill competing and planning to be in Rio.
“Imagine if they re-tested all the samples? Terrible.”
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