Salazar and Brown banned for four years

NEW YORK: Track coach Alberto Salazar, who trained fourtime Olympic champion Mo Farah and a number of other top runners, has been given a fouryear ban by the US AntiDoping Agency.

Usada said yesterday Salazar and Jeffrey Brown were receiving fouryear bans for, among other violations, possessing and trafficking testosterone while working at the Nike Oregon Project (NOP), where they trained top runners.

Brown was a paid consultant for the NOP and a physician for many of the runners.

A fouryear Usada investigation began after a BBC report detailing some of Salazar’s practices, which included infusions of a legal supplement called Lcarnitine that is supposed to enhance performance.

Usada chief executive officer Travis T Tygart said the athletes in these cases found the courage to speak out and ultimately exposed the truth.

‘‘While acting in connection with the Nike Oregon Project, Mr Salazar and Dr Brown demonstrated that winning was more important than the health and wellbeing of the athletes they were sworn to protect.’’

Salazar also tampered or attempted to tamper with NOP athletes’ doping control process, the agency said.

Brown was found to have tampered with records, administered an ‘‘overlimit’’ infusion and to have been complicit in Salazar’s trafficking of testosterone.

None of the athletes Salazar has worked with were mentioned in Usada’s report.

Salazar stopped coaching Farah in 2017 when the runner decided to move back to England. Farah said at the time the doping investigation was not the reason they parted ways.

Salazar moved into coaching after a successful distance running career in which he three times won the New York Marathon and claimed victory once in the Boston Marathon in the early 1980s.

Salazar, Brown and Nike, which funds NOP, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Salazar has in the past denied any wrongdoing.