BIGGEST FIGHT OF TYSON FURY’S CAREER
The tale of a farmer, the wild boar and failed drugs tests sounds laughable… but it’s deadly serious for the world heavyweight champion
ALL a big conspiracy in the sorry tale of a farmer’s revenge, or did the Furys make a pig’s ear of their defence against one of the most contentious doping cases in the history of British sport?
That is what must be established as Tyson Fury fights to save his career. A more surreal scenario would be hard to find, but there is grave seriousness at the heart of this muck and swill storm, which spins around the question of whether Fury is a world champion today because of lies told to his benefit in the past.
Ultimately, that is what this boils down to. And it is an inquiry that needs to remain narrow to those terms, in self-isolation if you prefer, because the temptation for some is to cloud this resurrected mystery with the narrative of Fury’s other battles.
That would be a plate of offal, on all counts.
Indeed, just as it is possible to admire how Fury is winning his personal struggles with depression, drink and recreational drugs, we must retain the right to ask about his professional conduct. One is not a shield for the other, particularly when the original UK Anti-Doping allegations in 2016 were of drug use in a sport as inherently dangerous as boxing.
To understand that in the context of this complex case, it is necessary to understand the details.
THE CASE
IN JUNE 2016, charges were finally brought by UK Anti-Doping against Tyson Fury and his cousin Hughie Fury. The timing is important because it came a full 16 months after they had returned positive tests for the banned steroid nandrolone in February 2015, shortly after Tyson and Hughie’s respective fights against Christian Hammer and Andriy Rudenko.
In the time between the positive tests and charges being brought, Tyson Fury became the unified heavyweight champion of the world by beating Wladimir Klitschko in November 2015.
But how to explain the metabolites of nandrolone once the charge was brought? The decision papers published by UKAD upon the case’s end in December 2017 showed that the Furys blamed it on ‘ingestion of offal of uncastrated wild boar or pig, or alternatively from contaminated supplements’.
This is where a 70-year-old farmer named Martin Carefoot comes in. He claims he was approached at his farmhouse near Preston in November 2016 — around five months after the charge — by a friend asking a favour on behalf of Fury’s entourage. The Irish Mail on Sunday revealed the Furys’ lawyers, Morgan Sports Law, would take two signed witness statements from Carefoot (right), who declared he supplied boar and other meat to the Fury team. Copies of those statements, dated January 17, 2017, and May 1, 2017, which have been seen by Sportsmail, were on documents marked as ‘before the National Anti-Doping Panel between UK Anti-Doping v Tyson Luke Fury and Hughie Lewis Fury’.
THE FIGHT
UKAD’s battle against the Furys was lengthy, expensive and controversial. Freedom of information requests showed it came to just shy of £600,000 — around seven per cent of their annual budget — and they eventually struck a compromise with the Furys in December 2017. The agreement came at a time that matters were reaching a head and the Furys’ fate was due to be decided by a hearing. The deal saw Tyson and Hughie Fury accept drugs bans of two years, backdated to December 2015 and expiring that month, for the failed tests. A second charge against Tyson Fury of refusing to take a test on September 7, 2016, was contested and dropped. As the two charges each carried a potential four-year ban, making eight years, to get two years backdated was widely considered lenient. One reason the first charge became undermined was the failure of UKAD to notify the Furys that they would be charged, thus hindering their opportunity to fully prepare a scientific defence based on contamination.
UKAD admitted their error subsequently and faced heavy criticism.
THE BOMBSHELL
TYSON FURY moved on with his career to become a boxing figurehead admired for the manner in which he has faced his mental health problems.
That resurrection from battles with suicidal urges culminated in his remarkable win over Deontay Wilder last month, restoring the 31-year-old to the top of the sport as the WBC heavyweight world champion.
Carefoot’s introduction is less a fly in the ointment, more a full-grown pig. In his explosive interview in the Irish Mail on Sunday, he said he lied about supplying boars to the Furys. More than that, he alleged he was offered £25,000 to do so. In one of the statements seen by
Sportsmail he said he supplied boars to the Furys every three to six weeks. He now says he never did.
In explaining the situation, and if he was willing to perjure himself, Carefoot said: ‘I was in too deep. They were dangling this carrot. I thought, “You’re going to get 25 grand for this”. I thought, “It’s not a hanging matter”. And so I went
along with it.’ He never received the £25,000 he alleges had been promised to him.
THE QUESTION
HOW will this affect Fury? We wait and see. Sportsmail understands UKAD will investigate this important new information on the basis that Carefoot claims he lied in the original defence of the Furys.
If UKAD find that to be the case, and that Carefoot’s signed statements influenced the investigation, the future for both of the Furys in the sport is less than certain. A second charge would carry the penalty of eight years if a guilty verdict is returned.
THE REACTION
FROM the Furys, there has been silence, barring one cryptic social media post from Tyson Fury. Requests for comment from MTK Global, which represents them, have gone unanswered. Frank Warren, who co-promotes the world champion, said: ‘How anybody can take this man (Carefoot) seriously is beyond belief. Tyson has never met this man in his life. What a load of rubbish. We’ll leave this with UKAD to look into and don’t expect it to go any further.’
The ball is in UKAD’s court.