Lamine Diack, president of the body that oversees global athletics, today surprised many in the sport by revealing he may stay on for another four years when his tenure expires in 2011.
Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, has often been mooted as Diack's successor, although he has never said whether he would put himself forward.
Sergey Bubka, who like Coe is currently a vice-president of the IAAF, has also been assumed to be a contender for the post.
But Diack, in Berlin to meet with the International Olympic Committee ahead of the world athletics championships, contradicted earlier suggestions that he would retire in two years time.
"It's possible if I'm still in good shape," said the 76-year-old from Senegal, responding to rumours that he planned to stay on. "Many people have been asking me to do that. It all depends upon my health."
The International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, also promised to accelerate the process by which it will decide how to redistribute the five medals, including three golds, stripped from US sprinter Marion Jones in 2007 after she admitted using performance-enhancing drugs during the Sydney Games in 2000.
The IOC, he said, would draw together all elements of the Jones and Balco cases and keep in contact with the US Anti-Doping Agency.
"We have decided this morning we are going to speed up this process as soon as possible," said Rogge.
He said a ruling was expected in "a couple of months" from the Court of Arbitration for Sport on an appeal by US relay runners stripped of their medals. The IOC disqualified Jones's team-mates, but conceded none of them broke any rules.
Diack said he expected "some news" on the issue by October. Jones won gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4 x 400m relay in Sydney, and bronze in the long jump and 4 x 100m relay.
Pauline-Davis Thompson of the Bahamas, who finished second in the 200m in Sydney and is waiting to learn if she will be awarded Jones's gold, also attended today's meeting.
IOC officials are reluctant to hand Jones's 100m gold to silver-medalist Katerina Thanou, a Greek sprinter who is at the centre of a doping scandal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Rogge also reiterated the IOC's commitment to the "athlete passports" plan to improve drug testing. But he said there needed to be more Wada-accredited laboratories around the world that could deal with testing.
