Salazar ban puts Black’s role in doubt
NEIL BLACK could quit as boss of British athletics in the wake of Alberto Salazar being handed a four-year ban for multiple doping offences.
Black, performance director of UK Athletics, has flown home from the World Championships in Doha, where his team fell two medals short of the minimum target of seven set by UK Sport.
But it is UKA’s relationship with Salazar, below, on Black’s watch that is his most pressing problem.
Nine months from the Tokyo Olympics, Black will consider his position after once describing Salazar as a “genius” and “one of the best people to work with I have ever come across”.
Black said: “I need to work through the findings fully. I’ll be personally reviewing thoughts that I had, the decisions I’ve made, the things that I’ve said.
“I’m certainly not ready to make any decisions. No timescales, but sooner rather than later.”
When allegations against Salazar, Sir Mo Farah’s longtime coach, were made in a BBC documentary in June 2015, Black said he was “very comfortable” with him training the British star.
Even when the US AntiDoping Agency began to investigate Salazar in the same year, UKA found “no reason for concern”.
Farah chose to continue working with the Cuban-born American and UKA went along with him.
Black admitted to being “shocked” by the Salazar verdict. He added: “That was my initial reaction and I still feel a little bit like that at the moment.”
It has been reported that a leading British coach has written to UKA chiefs calling for an investigation into whether any of Salazar’s controversial methods were employed by staff in charge of the national team.