Mo coach quits UKA role after Salazar scandal
Under-fire coach Barry fudge will leave UK Athletics (UKA) next week after a period of intense scrutiny. The head of endurance, who was once Mo farah’s right-hand man and the prime link between UKA and farah’s banned former coach Alberto Salazar, has been at the organisation more than a decade. But his future has looked increasingly uncertain in recent months after some awkward revelations, including one that he travelled to Switzerland to procure the legal supplement L-carnitine from one of Salazar’s contacts for use by farah around the time of the 2014 London Marathon. The trip followed deliberations between fudge, former UKA medical chief dr rob Chakraverty and the late ex-performance director neil Black over the ethics of using L-carnitine before they decided to proceed anyway. farah denied using it to US Anti-doping investigators before changing his story. fudge’s relationship with Salazar and that between UKA and Salazar have been thrown into sharp light since the American coach’s fouryear ban for anti-doping violations in October. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by farah or fudge and Salazar is appealing against his suspension. fudge’s support of Salazar was such that after a BBC Panorama broadcast in 2015, detailing allegations against Salazar’s nike Oregon Project, Black and fudge were said to have made it clear to the UKA board that their positions would be untenable if links with the coach were severed. UKA CeO Jo Coates said: ‘We’d like to thank Barry for his work for the organisation over the years.’ fudge said: ‘The time is right for me to move on, and i am looking forward to watching our athletes progress and succeed at future championships. ‘i look forward to seeing the significant progress we have made being built on in the future. ‘Having spent the last decade spending summers away from the family and in various training locations across the world, i’m looking forward to taking a break from that routine and working on some exciting new projects.’
lTHe British Athletics Championships will take place behind closed doors on September 4-5 at Manchester regional Arena.