London: Paula Radcliffe has called for lifetime bans for serious doping offences following a Daily Telegraph investigation into 100m world champion Justin Gatlin’s coach and agent.

The women’s marathon world record holder called for athletics authorities to “hit athlete entourages hard” and said that cheating warranted the “toughest sanction possible”.

“To my mind, that’s an immediate lifetime ban,” she said.

Radcliffe on Tuesday shared a tweet referring to Gatlin which asked: “Why is sport forced to deal with cheats #lifeban”.

The comments come as The Daily Telegraph revealed how the world champion sprinter became embroiled in a new doping scandal after members of his team offered to illicitly supply performance-enhancing drugs.

Speaking to the London Evening Standard, Radcliffe, 44, said: “If you break the rules like that, you should be struck off for life.”

Gatlin responded to the allegations yesterday morning. In a statement on social media, he said that he was “not using and have not used” banned substances and that he was shocked and surprised to learn that his coach “would have anything to do with even the appearance of these current accusations”.

“I fired him as soon as I found out about this,” he added. Anti-doping officials have announced that they are to investigate Gatlin and two of his associates following an investigation in which undercover reporters filmed Robert Wagner, an agent of Gatlin, offering to supply and administer testosterone and human growth hormone.

In one meeting, the agent claimed that Gatlin had himself been taking performance-enhancing drugs, which the sprinter has strenuously denied.

Gatlin’s legal representatives told The Daily Telegraph that he had sacked Mitchell and revealed more than five years’ worth of official drugs tests to show “he has never tested positive for any banned substance”.

Gatlin’s agent for the past 14 years, Renaldo Nehemiah, said that Wagner had worked for Gatlin on no more than two or three occasions and that the sprinter was not present when banned substances were discussed with either the agent or coach.

Gatlin’s coach, Dennis Mitchell, who himself was banned for doping, and who has now been sacked by the sprinter, told undercover reporters that athletes are able to get away with doping because the drugs they use cannot be detected by tests.

Mitchell said in a statement that none of his current athletes were using banned substances.

Jo Pavey, the British athlete who won a gold medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2014 European Championships, said that Gatlin should not have been able to compete at the world championships last summer.

She said: “It was an unfortunate day for the sport... you’ve got someone who’s a two-time drugs cheat actually winning the gold medal. If people are prepared to destroy our sport, they should take the consequences.”

Lord Coe, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), said that the allegations are “extremely serious” and called on the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) to investigate. Under IAAF rules, all athlete support personnel are bound by both the IAAF anti-doping code and IAAF integrity code of conduct.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017