Mo Farah's coach, Alberto Salazar, intends to clear his name and prove that allegations against him involving doping claims are fabricated.
American Salazar, who is a US marathon legend, became Farah's coach in 2011, when the British athlete started to train at the prestigious Nike Oregon Project in Portland, US. Salazar has recently been accused that he has doped his athletes over the years; the accusations came from several athletes and staff associated with the Nike Oregon Project, who have reported their concerns to Usada, the US Anti-Doping Agency.
An investigation alleged that the Cuban born coach violated anti-doping rules and doped US runner Galen Rupp, who holds the US 10,000m record. Salazar has been coaching Rupp, from Portland, for 14 years, and the doping allegations go back to 2002, when the runner was only 16 years old. Both Rupp, who has been Farah's training partner and won Silver medal in 10,000m at the London 2012 Olympics, and Salazar strongly rejected any allegations.
Although there are no implications that the double Olympic Champion has been involved in the doping, Britain's best- loved track athlete has been advised to stay away from his coach, and not to train at the Nike Oregon Project. Nevertheless, the whole saga affected the athlete, who decided to pull -out of a Diamond League Race in Birmingham on Sunday and travel to Portland to confront his coach, who turned him into a champion.
Ed Warner, the UK Athletics chairman, confirmed that the governing body would go through all of Farah's records to ensure their superstar distance runner is clean. Nevertheless, it seems that, whatever the outcome, it is not going to be good for Farah, whose name has been dragged down by the doping scandal.
Lord Coe, who aspires to become the President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), hopes that Salazar will manage to defend his name.
However, there are doping allegations associated with the IAAF officials as well: three senior officials have recently resigned from the organisation, awaiting the outcome of an investigation of the cover-up of wide spread doping in Russian athletics. There is a lot to be said about doping in athletics as a whole.
Usada has not confirmed whether it is investigating claims against Salazar.
