Ban on Salazar overshadows action
DOHA:Not a single runner passing through the orbit of famed track coach Alberto Salazar has been implicated for doping, so when Donavan Brazier coasted in for a blowout victory on Tuesday in the 800m race at world championships, there was no reason to suspect he would be, either.
But for Brazier, the 22-year-old who became the first American to win a world championship at this distance, there was no avoiding the subject of Salazar. And for track and field, there is no avoiding the ever-present specter of doping. On a night when American men won gold in the 200, 800 and pole vault, many of the questions were about a 61-year-old coach who was kicked out of the event earlier in the day.
Brazier runs for the Nike Oregon Project, a 12-person track team headed by Salazar. He was ejected after receiving a four-year suspension for violations that involved pushing his runners to use pills, gels and infusions in ways designed to stretch the rules without quite breaking them.
In a way, Salazar’s schemes were a success because none of his athletes ever got caught.
Brazier says the man who coaches him at NOP isn’t Salazar, but an assistant, Pete Julian, who was present after the finish, beaming like a proud papa. In fact, Brazier said he barely knows Salazar. It didn’t mean the new champion, whose time of 1 minute, 42.34 seconds set an American record, wouldn’t face questions about his affiliation with the team Salazar runs—a team that had been under investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency for around six years before the ban came down on Tuesday. “It would be pretty ignorant to associate me with that,” Brazier said. “The investigation started when I was in high school, and I had nothing to do with it.”
Brazier joins distance runner Sifan Hassan as the second athlete from the NOP to win a gold at these championships. Over the years, Salazar’s most decorated champion was Britain’s Mo Farah, the four-time Olympic gold medalist who isn’t anywhere near Doha but still felt compelled to issue a statement distancing himself from his old coach. “I left NOP in 2017 but as I’ve always said, I have no tolerance for anyone who breaks the rules or crosses a line,” Farah said.
‘LAB ANIMALS’
BERLIN:Top coach Alberto Salazar, banned for four years following a doping probe, used athletes as “laboratory animals”, the US Anti-Doping Agency’s chief Travis Tygart said on Wednesday.
Tygart told German broadcaster ZDF that athletes in Salazar’s NOP training group were kept in the dark about the substances they were given, including whether they were illegal or not. He pointed out that “no athlete currently at the World Championships in Doha is concerned”.