Missed drugs tests were ‘simple mistakes’: Farah

LONDON — Mo Farah has strenuously denied ever having taken banned drugs and claimed his controversial coach Alberto Salazar has assured him he has not overseen the use of prohibited substances.

Farah has been at the centre of a drugs storm ever since Salazar, the man who coached him to double Olympic gold in 2012, was the subject of a series of doping allegations made by the BBC’s Panorama programme.

The controversy surrounding Farah then deepened when it was claimed that he had missed two drugs tests with United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD) officials in the build-up to the London Games. A third missed test would have seen him banned from the sport.

Farah, one of the world’s biggest names in athletics, had not spoken since a press conference held on June 6 ahead of a planned appearance at an athletics meeting in Birmingham, when he denied wrongdoing and said he would be seeking answers from Salazar.

He has now broken that silence with a post on his Facebook page yesterday in which he wrote: “I have never taken performance enhancing drugs in my life and I never will. Over the course of my career I have taken hundreds of drugs tests and every single one has been negative.

“I’ve fully explained the only two tests in my career that I have ever missed, which the authorities understood, and there was never any suggestion that these were anything more than simple mistakes.

“The last two weeks have been the toughest of my life — with rumours and speculation about me that are completely false — and the impact this has had on my family and friends has left me angry, frustrated and upset. In particular, the media pressure on my young family and my wife, who is five months pregnant, is extremely painful, especially as I’m away training for some important races.

“As I made clear, I went to Portland to speak to Alberto Salazar and demand answers. He reassured me that the claims are false and that he will soon be providing evidence to make that clear. Until then I will not be commenting further on the allegations.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fans, family, friends and team-mates for all the great support they have provided over the last few days and hope that I will now be allowed to focus on my training and winning medals for my country.”

It comes after Farah, who won the men’s 5,000m and 10,000m gold at the London Olympics, was under pressure on Thursday night (yesterday morning, Singapore time) to fully explain missing two drugs tests after it emerged his doorbell would have been rung up to seven times when he failed to answer it to anti-doping officials before London 2012.

The crisis intensified yesterday, after it was also revealed he avoided being banned from the scene of his greatest triumph because he was deemed not to have evaded testers at his Teddington home in early 2011, shortly after he began working with Salazar.

UKAD decided Farah was guilty of “negligence” rather than the more serious offence of evasion after accepting his explanation that he failed to hear the doorbell of his three-bed house while in his bedroom.

That is despite UKAD confirming that its doping control officer would have been under orders to ring again or knock on the door once every 10 or 15 minutes during the hour in which Farah was required to make himself available for testing.

UKAD was unable yesterday to discuss the 32-year-old’s case because he had not committed an anti-doping violation under the World Anti-Doping Code.

But, explaining its “detailed protocols” for unanswered house visits, UKAD’s legal director Graham Arthur said: “They include ringing the doorbell every 10-15 minutes or so, knocking and staying there for the full hour. We often ask them to stay a little bit past the hour in order as well.”

Farah’s failure to respond was recorded as a missed test, his second in around a year under anti-doping’s “three strikes” system, in which a third is almost certain to trigger a ban — as it infamously did for Christine Ohuruogu.

UKAD refused to comment on how many athletes reached two strikes but chief executive Nicole Sapstead admitted it was “not common”.

With the threat of missing out on London 2012 hanging over Farah, he appealed the finding, with evidence submitted by the 5,000m and 10,000m champion including a video filmed in his house in which his agent, Ricky Simms, attempted to show it was difficult to hear the doorbell from his client’s bedroom.

Simms did not respond to requests for comment yesterday amid unanswered questions about whether Farah had been awake or asleep at the time of the visit and at what time it took place — it could have been at any hour between 6am and 11pm.

Sapstead was sympathetic to athletes who miss tests after revealing figures that showed Farah was far from alone among British sports stars. “I would say we are all human, and we all have moment where we drop the ball,” she said.

But Arthur added: “The missed test relates to the ‘hour’ that the athlete has to provide. And the athlete can change that hour either in terms of the hour itself or the location at any point, virtually up to when the hour starts.

“They can do that by phone, text or email, or going on the Internet and logging on their ‘whereabouts data’. Or they can do it through an app. It couldn’t really be easier for an athlete to update his or her hour if they knew that they weren’t going to be there.”

It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that Salazar warned Farah in an email exchange in May 2011: “If you miss another test, they will hang you.”

There is no suggestion Farah has ever doped, while Salazar denies any wrongdoing and is preparing a detailed rebuttal to the allegations against him. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH