It’s not racist to quiz Farah. It’s what happens if your ex-coach is a drug cheat
It IS a very peculiar form of racism that affects Mo Farah. It is the same racism suffered by Bradley Wiggins, by Galen Rupp, or even Maria Sharapova. It is the racism of suspicion, of association, of uncertainty. So, not racism at all, really.
Farah doesn’t get asked difficult questions because he’s black. He gets them because he has spent a large part of his career — the most productive, successful part, too — under the tutelage of a dirty coach. A man found guilty and banned for four years after a forensic investigation into his practices. Alberto Salazar.
Rupp gets the same questions because of his links with Salazar, and he’s a white guy. So is Wiggins, who was pursued over the contents of a Jiffy bag, never adequately explained.
Actually, if Farah wants to know why he gets quizzed, it really is whitey who is to blame. One Caucasian in particular: Lance Armstrong. No one is suggesting the two bear direct comparison, yet Armstrong’s greatest crime was to spoil it for everybody, to make it harder to believe. Armstrong is the reason feats are no longer taken at face value.
He also displayed outrage, took great offence, and was affronted at being challenged. then it turned out he had lied and acted and was cheating all along. And he never failed a drugs test. the trust in sport changed that day.
So, Farah is living with the consequence of Armstrong’s legacy, and of a professional relationship he was warned about years ago; a relationship he chose and then chose not to end when he had the opportunity. that isn’t racism, that’s sport. that’s ethics. For Farah to link the very legitimate questions he receives with racist tropes is a desperate ploy.
No doubt, like any black man in the public eye, he will have endured abuse. Yet racists do not need a reason beyond skin colour to sour the mood. Racists aren’t waiting for a four-year investigation to deliver its findings before being motivated to act.
In the fall-out from the Salazar verdict, Paula Radcliffe was professionally damaged, too, for a conflict of interests as she publicly talked down the findings on national television. Was that a by-product of prejudice, too, or should we stop this self- serving convergence of ideas?
By advancing the thought that to question him is racist, Farah wants to shut down the debate.
Serena Williams took the same line at the 2018 US Open, by positioning her rant at umpire Carlos Ramos as a defiant retort to sexism. Both stances are bogus.
‘I can’t win, you’ve already made up your mind about what you’re going to write,’ said Farah at his press conference prior to an eighth-placed finish at the Chicago Marathon. ‘As much as I am nice to you, there is a clear agenda to this. I have seen it many times. I have seen it with Raheem Sterling, with Lewis Hamilton. I cannot win whatever I do.’
Yet Sterling and Hamilton have never had doubts raised about their professional integrity. Sterling’s concerns were with the media portrayal of his persona, his private life; Hamilton’s too. Farah’s issues are all about the track, the road, the training