I was human guinea pig at Nike Project, claims coach
AFORMER coach at the Nike Oregon Project says he is worried about his long- term health after its boss Alberto Salazar and the team doctor allegedly used him as a guinea pig to test the performance- enhancing benefits of different drugs. Steve Magness was Salazar’s deputy at the Nike Project in 2011. But he claimed his own health was disregarded as Salazar, Mo Farah’s principal coach since January 2011, sought to identify substances that could give athletes an edge.
Magness also claimed that when he was a teenager the team’s doctor, Jeffrey Brown, told him he had the disease Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis but he is now concerned it was a bogus diagnosis.
Salazar and Brown are under investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and one of their alleged offences is an abuse of thyroid medication which is thought to help athletes lose weight and give them a feeling of lightness.
‘When I was 15 or 16, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s,’ Magness told Sportsmail.
‘As a teenager I’m not going to think, “Is this doctor diagnosing me with the wrong disease?”
‘You just accept what the doctor says. But a decade later you’re sitting there thinking, “Do I have this thing or was it just because the treatment for it might improve my performance?”
‘A lot of the time athletes blindly trust their support personnel and most of the time that works out well unless your support personnel is trying to push boundaries. That’s probably the scariest part of it all.’
Vern Gambetta, a coach who was part of the Nike Project in 2003 but was later fired, also criticised Salazar’s methods.
A leaked report by USADA, published by the Sunday Times, revealed that Salazar instructed Magness to be given an infusion of L-carnitine, an amino acid which is legal unless administered intravenously in a quantity of more than 50ml in a six-hour period.
Magness was estimated to have had an infusion of one litre, 20 times the maximum amount, over a four-hour period.
An email from Magness to Salazar with his verdict on the experiment read: ‘ Significant performance enhancement that is almost unbelievable with a supplement.’
According to the Sunday Times, Salazar emailed Lance Armstrong to sing L-carnitine’s praises.
Farah has admitted to once trying an energy drink containing L-carnitine but denied ever breaching anti-doping rules.
‘It’s almost a dark shame of mine because retrospectively I think, “Why did I let myself be the guinea pig?”’ added Magness.
‘But the mindset at the time was that Dr Brown was my physician since I was a kid and Salazar was my boss and both were saying, “Do this and you’ll be OK” and you don’t second-guess them. The point is, it doesn’t matter if it was L-carnitine, thyroid or vitamin D. It was a win-at-all-costs culture.’
UK Athletics has unequivocally backed Salazar and the Nike Project — even since USADA opened their investigation into the training group after allegations made in a 2015 BBC Panorama documentary.
Farah has been allowed to remain in Oregon. UKA’s performance director Neil Black makes regular visits, often accompanied by head of endurance Barry Fudge. His predecessor Ian Stewart also regularly called in at the project and all three have close relationships with Salazar.
Magness thinks a conflict of interest exists which has contributed to UKA’s unwavering support.
There are suggestions that a warning from a UKA medic that Farah’s health was being endangered was not seen as sufficient reason to encourage the double Olympic champion to leave Salazar.
‘At least while I was there they were incredibly intertwined,’ said Magness. ‘As a governing body your responsibility shouldn’t be towards any shoe company or group, it’s to support athletes and make sure the sport is taken care of.
‘What you have is a huge conflict of interest with the people who should probably be the ones to step in but they had no incentive to because they were very intertwined. That’s something that certainly needs to be re-evaluated.’