MORE QUESTIONS FOR SALAZAR
Farah’s ex-coach and a box of drugs
THE extent to which Mo Farah’s controversial former coach Alberto Salazar left the Briton exposed to potential embarrassment is revealed today as a whistleblower tells The Mail
on Sunday that Salazar left testosterone in a common area of an apartment the two were sharing.
A boxful of the banned performanceenhancing drug was seen on a sideboard in the communal kitchen of a twobedroom flat shared by Farah and Salazar at a training camp in the US in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics.
Our investigation has established that Farah and Salazar shared the two-man apartment in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an extended period during a highaltitude training camp in February 2012 for athletes who were part of the Nike Oregon Project (NOP) training group, run by Salazar, although Farah was away in England at the time the testosterone was spotted.
Salazar was handed a fouryear ban from sport last month for anti-doping violations after an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). He was convicted on three counts, including ‘trafficking and/or attempted trafficking of testosterone’. He was also found guilty of administering infusions of the supplement L-carnitine ‘in excess of the applicable limit’, and of ‘tampering and/or attempted tampering with the NOP athletes’ doping control process’. Farah, 36, who runs in the Chicago Marathon today, where he won last year, is now regarded as one of the world’s all-time great distance runners. He was part of the NOP under Salazar’s tutelage from 2011 to 2017, transforming into a four-time Olympic champion and six-time world champion in the 5,000m and 10,000m. Farah has never tested positive for illegal drugs and split from Salazar by mutual consent in 2017. But concerns over Salazar’s suitability as a coach for him were persistent from 2015 onwards, when he was first accused of doping and operating in grey areas in a joint investigation by the BBC’s Panorama and ProPublica, an American media group. A former NOP staff member, Steve Magness, was a key whistleblower as USADA probed Salazar’s activity from 2015 onwards. The arbitration panel that convicted Salazar accepted Magness’s witness account that he saw Salazar ‘with testosterone on the counter in the common area at a condo where some athletes of the NOP were staying in 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico’.
Coupled with testimony from former NOP runner Kara Goucher, the panel established that Salazar ‘had actual, physical possession of testosterone at the two training camps where the athletes of the NOP and Respondent were living together’. Salazar told the
MoS this week that he was always ‘careful’ with his testosterone and would never leave it in a communal area.
Magness has now confirmed that the ‘counter’ in question was the kitchen counter in the two-bedroom flat. ‘We (the NOP group) had several different apartments, and Alberto was staying in this one with Farah,’ says Magness.
Magness moved into Farah’s room soon after Farah flew to England for a number of days for a race in Birmingham and says the drugs were visible, and would have been seen by any other athletes visiting the apartment.
‘I saw the box of it,’ he says. ‘And I knew that was testosterone. Farah was sharing the flat with Alberto. In fact, some of (Farah’s) stuff was still there when I stayed in his room when he went away for those few days to race. We had another athlete using my room, so I took Farah’s (for those days). I moved in after Farah left and the testosterone
was on the kitchen counter. It was there in plain sight the whole time I was there, and when I moved back to my own apartment, when Mo got back.’ USADA argued Salazar could not establish an ‘acceptable justification’ for his possession of testosterone ‘because there was no legitimate basis to prescribe (Salazar) testosterone (at that time)’. Magness says Salazar later told him that the testosterone was for his personal use, for a heart condition. But even the presence of the drug in a flat’s communal area would leave coaches or athletes susceptible to being accused of an anti-doping violation. Under clause 2.6.1 of global anti-doping rules, possession of any prohibited substance, such as testosterone, is forbidden, even out-ofcompetition, for both athletes and coaches, and can be prosecuted.
The disciplinary panel ruled that there was ‘no doubt from the evidence that he (Salazar) was indeed prescribed the testosterone for his personal use, whether or not his doctors followed appropriate medical guidelines’.
Yet between 2016 and 2018, on several occasions, before travelling, Salazar was administered ‘an injection of testosterone’ precisely so that he did not have to travel with the banned substance.
Farah declined to answer questions about whether he saw testosterone in the flat and, if so, whether he asked why it was there.