MO SPLIT RIDDLE
Insiders believe that ‘dumped’ Salazar may still pull the strings
MO FARAH’S decision to split from Alberto Salazar and make Gary Lough his new head coach was met with a fair amount of scepticism across athletics yesterday.
Farah’s PR team insist there is now a clear separation between the four-times Olympic champion and Salazar, the American coach who is still at the centre of an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
A report in a newspaper in Oregon, by a journalist considered very much a Salazar ally, claimed the former marathon champion had offered to continue advising Farah. But that was dismissed by a Farah spokeswoman yesterday. ‘Mo has every confidence in his new coaching partnership and along with the support of UK Athletics it will be all he needs, so they won’t be working together going forward,’ she insisted.
Even so, insiders believe the move to work with Lough, who UK Athletics confirmed yesterday is not on their database as a qualified coach but has been a consultant for their endurance team, goes beyond Farah’s decision to return from Oregon to live with his family in London.
Farah has been unable to escape questions about Salazar since allegations were made to the BBC by a number of former Nike Oregon Project employees and athletes in 2015. Salazar contests the claims, but from a PR perspective Farah’s announcement on Twitter on Monday night certainly helps.
High- level sources maintain that pressure was also applied by Virgin London Marathon bosses to split from Salazar during negotiations with Farah about running in their race for the next two years, even though this has been denied by those same London officials.
As Sportsmail revealed last month, a UK Athletics representative asked Farah to drop Salazar as his coach in June. Yesterday, sources insisted the motivation was as much about protecting the Virgin London Marathon brand as any desire to have Salazar off the scene come the World Championships in London last August. In the end Salazar did not attend London 2017, sending his son instead.
Those inside the sport are also perplexed by the choice of Lough, even though he played a part in his wife Paula Radcliffe’s success as a world- record holding marathon runner.
It is well known in athletics circles that the relationship between Radcliffe and Farah has been strained in recent years, apparently because Radcliffe was critical of Farah when he was paid handsomely for running only half the London Marathon in 2013. Farah insists he and Lough are close.
Farah said he was splitting with Salazar because he cannot coach him in London when he lives in the US. Lough lives with his wife in Monaco. Radcliffe and Lough do maintain strong ties with Nike.
To complicate matters further, Lough now acts as an agent to certain UK athletes, even though his lack of a licence was a source of embarrassment for both himself and UKA earlier this year. It led to a complaint from a coach who questioned Lough’s presence at official UKA training camps.
Now, though, it seems he will be regularly attending such camps, even if there is a widely held view that, much like UKA head of endurance Barry Fudge, he will be doing little more than holding a stopwatch while Farah continues to follow a Salazar- designed training programme. Salazar, after all, is doing a decent job of turning Farah’s long- time training partner Galen Rupp into a world-class marathon runner.
Lough was unavailable for comment. ‘Mo’s training takes him all over the world and Gary will be accompanying him most of the time,’ said Farah’s camp. SOUTH AFRICAN sprinter Wayde van Niekerk will miss the Commonwealth Games next April after suffering a serious knee injury during a celebrity touch rugby game.