Jaysus
Interesting that you’d have a Bahraini woman covered from head to toe in tattoos and with a mouth piercing.
She’s from Nigeria
Oh she is yeah
100%
she’s not even an Arab which is totally contrary with the citizenship laws those states have - she cant be a moslem either by the tattoos
strange one
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What became of the feisty Algerian runner , Bulmerka ?
Time wasn’t on her side…
she’d know alright
The call comes from Gary Lough, who says he is at the airport in Nairobi with Mo Farah, about to board a flight to Addis Ababa.
Lough, coach to Farah since September 2017 and husband to Paula Radcliffe, invites The Times to join them at their high-altitude training camp in Ethiopia for a couple of days: access all areas, no subject off limits. “You can take a look in our hotel rooms if you want,” Lough says.
Four months earlier, the exchanges with Farah and Lough had been rather less convivial. In Chicago, the day before a race that would persuade Farah to ditch his marathon ambitions and return to the track at this summer’s Tokyo Olympic Games, the 36-year-old bristled in response to questions about the four-year doping ban for his former coach, Alberto Salazar. He complained to reporters at the Chicago Hilton that Salazar’s doping violations had nothing to do with him; that the coverage, and use of his name in headlines, was motivated by a racist agenda.
Now, however, Farah wants to give a more measured response to the accusations and explain why he remained with a coach who took him from also-ran to world beater; a four-times Olympic champion and winner of ten consecutive global titles. Now he is prepared to admit just how devastating an impact the Salazar scandal has had on his life, not to mention his reputation.
He wants to talk but he is also keen to show us the simple, almost monastic existence he leads — “eat, train, sleep, repeat” — for months at a time here in Sululta, away from his family and the comforts of their Surrey home.
Farah wants us to see a place that he says is not similar to where he spent the first few years of his life, in Somalia. Here, people live without fresh running water and nothing that even comes close to proper waste management, and deal with traffic jams caused by four legs moving rather slower than four wheels. Lough is nursing a mild case of whiplash after being knocked down by a horse and cart while attempting to hand out drinks to his runners.
Farah takes us to his favourite juice bar (a corrugated iron shack on a roadside) to sample an avocado and Vimto smoothie (actually not as bad as it sounds), invites us to join him for lunch on both days and urges us to try the local coffee, made over an open fire. He allows us to watch him train on an old spin bike in the most basic of hotel gyms. He shows us the vast, lush-green plain where many of the world’s fastest distance runners punish themselves, more than 2,500 metres above sea level, in air so thin it is like “breathing through a straw”. And we take a stroll to the house, through a maze of streets, where most of his training partners prefer to stay, including a chap called Mohamed Ali, who looks more like Farah than his own twin brother.
Farah trains in modest gym facilities near Addis Ababa
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Farah and Lough are quick to dismiss any suggestion that a most unexpected invitation is a pre-emptive response to the imminent broadcast of a BBC Panorama programme, and the fact this newspaper has been digging deeper into his relationship with Salazar. When we finally sit down for an interview, Farah concedes that, since the BBC first levelled those allegations against Salazar in June 2015, he has occasionally behaved like a “prick” towards reporters. Indeed, he says it was never his intention in Chicago to accuse journalists of being racist. “That came out wrong,” he says. “I’m not always very good at expressing myself.”
Farah has never hidden from the media but access to him has been carefully managed, often by the expensive PR firm he hired soon after those original allegations. Tough questions have been asked, of course, but often in the controlled environment of a press conference that is cut short the moment the temperature rises. So this is unusual. Here, on a balcony at his modest one-star hotel, Farah has only Lough for a minder, and as long as is required to revisit his life under a coach in Salazar who is now preparing for an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
He has more time, it turns out, because he is unable to run due to an achilles injury he suffered in Kenya before arriving here.
Kenya was not part of the original plan. But they were diverted, Lough explains, because Jama Aden had been spotted in Sululta and Farah knows only too well that a coach who remains at the centre of an investigation conducted jointly by the Spanish police and the anti-doping authorities — one that resulted in his arrest after the seizure of banned substances in a hotel occupied by his training group — is not someone he can afford to be seen anywhere near. Especially when links between Farah and Aden have been held against the Briton in the past.
Over the years, Farah has tried to deny even knowing Aden, who has always maintained his innocence. During the Olympic Games in Rio four years ago, he dared to claim that Aden, 57, was little more than a fan who had requested a “selfie”, despite UK Athletics having already confirmed that Aden had assisted in organising training sessions at altitude camps.
Now, at least, Farah is being more honest. “When I got asked and I said in that press conference [in Rio] and said ‘yeah, I know him but I don’t know him’, that’s not the reality,” he says. “The reality is he’s a Somalian and I’m from a Somalian background, and I’ve known Jama for many years. He coached Abdi Bile [a Somalian who won the world 1,500 metres title in 1987] and I’ll never forget when he arranged for Abdi Bile to call me. He wanted to say he was proud of me; this guy that Somalian people celebrate.”
Farah at a roadside shack in Sululta that dispenses local home-roasted coffee
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
How does he view the circumstances surrounding the Spanish police raid? “That’s disappointing,” Farah says. “I’d now want him to stay out of my way, of course.”
His association with Salazar has proved more significant. During this interview there is not one word of criticism for his former coach, and he admits to not having read the written decision that explained why arbitrators in the United States banned Salazar, 61, for four years. But Farah says the damage to him has been considerable, not least financially.
Lough interjects, making the point that a second Olympic double in 2016 should have guaranteed major sponsorship income. “Why did he not have four blue-chip companies lined up behind him?” Lough says. Farah nods in agreement. “You think about it, why would anyone want to be associated when you . . . all the time,” says Farah. “If I wasn’t Mo Farah and I saw Mo Farah and I’m seeing these headlines, I’d question . . . yeah, I’d ask the same questions.” So sponsors have turned their backs? “Yeah, of course,” he says. “I’m just being honest. I’ve got nothing to hide. If I did have something to hide why would I want to face you?
“I don’t want to go into any more detail but there’s been a lot of stuff, financially and emotionally, where I have suffered a lot.”
Salazar was charged by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) in the spring of 2017. At roughly the same time the first press reports predicting a split between the head of the Nike Oregon Project and its most successful athlete appeared. Farah insists his departure later that year was not triggered by any kind of tip-off.
“I didn’t have a clue,” he says. “For me [when news broke of the ban last September] it was like, wow, four years. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God’. I know I never did anything. I know he was my coach. But to put up with this year after year, it’s not you, it’s the coach, but it’s you it is aimed at, is quite frustrating.”
In hindsight, does he wish that he had left Oregon at the first sign of trouble? “If I had realised there was going to be a problem, I would have been out,” he says. “But I was faced with someone who had helped me in my career, to get me where I was, and you have the right to talk to him and look him in the eye.” Did he admit to Farah that he had crossed a line when experimenting with testosterone and L-carnitine infusions? “No, he didn’t say any of that,” Farah says. “He said they are just allegations made by people with grudges and ‘I promise you this will be proven’. At that point you don’t want to think anything else, and you just want to carry on.
Farah feels the strain during a 90min session on an indoor training bike
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
“He also hadn’t been found guilty. And it wasn’t just about me. As a single man I could have just said ‘move’. But I had three kids — actually I think my son was just born — I had four kids, three at school, my wife’s there, we’d bought a house. I’m not just going to say, ‘There’s been some allegations, we’re going.’”
Farah claims never to have seen anything that amounted to a breach of anti-doping regulations. But what of the medication he was given? At a parliamentary hearing, the former UK Athletics physician, John Rogers, confirmed that he was forced to intervene when he discovered Salazar was giving Farah medication that represented a risk to the runner’s health. As a leaked Usada report initially revealed, in July 2011 Dr Rogers sent an email to the medical staff at UK Athletics citing his concerns that Salazar was giving Farah calcitonin and high doses of vitamin D and iron. Indeed, Rogers reported to his medical colleagues that he had told Farah and Salazar to stop using the medication. Rogers then told MPs that calcitonin can affect calcium metabolism, which could prove problematic to Farah because of a “background medical issue”.
When reminded of this, Farah seems unconcerned. “Alberto is very focused on his athletes,” he says. “He wants to get the best out of you. If you’re sick, he won’t just say, ‘Take a paracetamol.’ He’ll want to know if there’s anything stronger they can give you. I take supplements that help you recover, and get you back training. Everything I did was done through the UKA doctors and when John Rogers came back and said, ‘Mo. That’s not good for you,’ we stopped.”
Only Farah remained on one of the medications until after he secured his first world title in Daegu in 2011. “Which one?” asks Farah. “Was it vitamin D? I didn’t carry on with anything that wasn’t good for me. In Portland you had to take vitamin D because there’s not much sun.” It was actually calcitonin, and according to a leaked Usada report, Farah remained on it until November of that year.
While Farah denies ever using the thyroid medication prescribed by Jeffrey Brown — the Texas physician banned for four years last September — to a number of Nike Oregon Project athletes, he admits Salazar was a coach who liked to experiment. “Hearing from Alberto, it was crazy,” he says. “If this drink just came out, he’d be obsessive about it saying, ‘You gotta take it.’ It was the same thing with L-carnitine. It was no secret. The stuff was made in the UK and we tried it out. We had big tubs of it, we tried it in powder form, mixing it with water. It was so sweet. I loved it. I was drinking it. But we all gained weight.”
Farah received an infusion containing L-carnitine before the 2014 London Marathon. It caused a stir when it emerged that Dr Rob Chakraverty, then chief medical officer of UK Athletics, had not properly recorded the amount he injected — there are strict rules on how much an athlete can receive in a certain time period — but Farah maintains it was the one and only time he tried it via that method, after running so poorly in the race.
The only real traffic near Farah’s camp is of the four-legged variety as Lough, Farah’s coach, found out in a painful recent collision
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Lough listens intently, occasionally becoming exasperated with the line of questioning. Farah, however, appears unruffled, even if there are some spiky responses when it comes to discussing certain individuals. He considers it unfair that Neil Black, the UKA performance director and his personal physiotherapist, lost his job last year for publicly backing Salazar. Particularly, he complains, when other British athletes are working with overseas coaches with links to doping. Last year it emerged that three British athletes funded by UK Athletics were working with Lance Brauman, an American coach who guided convicted drug cheat Tyson Gay to world title glory from his jail cell.
Double standards? “There are,” he says. “I have a lot of respect for Neil Black. He’s paid a price for doing what he thought was right.”
Farah also has some harsh words for some of the Nike Oregon Project whistleblowers. They are widely regarded as courageous for standing up to a hugely influential coach backed by the most powerful sports brand in the world, so Farah may not gain much support for his views. But he essentially accuses Kara Goucher, a 10,000m world championship silver medallist, of benefiting from thyroid medication, only to then complain about it. “With Kara, you have to do the right thing,” he says. “If somebody has helped you, done everything for you as a coach, been like a father to you, and you hurt them, how does that work?
“If she had something against him why didn’t she talk to him? And if she saw something wrong, in the group, why didn’t she report it? And she took medication in her career, to help her win medals.”
Which medication? “Thyroid,” he says. “If I was in that scenario and I saw something inside there that was wrong, you take yourself away from there and you report it. Not wait like that. That’s not fair. I would have been the first one out if I saw anything.” Goucher has indicated in the past that she had a medical reason for using the medication.
Farah also targets Steve Magness, the former coach who was used as a guinea pig for the L-carnitine experiment that involved exceeding the legal limit for infusions. The effect on Magness, a top college miler-turned assistant coach, was so impressive that Salazar shared his excitement via email with his close friend, Lance Armstrong, the disgraced former cyclist.
“I think Magness should be charged,” Farah says. “He crossed the line.” It appears Usada chose not to because of the role Magness played in the investigation. Again, there is no apparent resentment of Salazar. He and Lough were training in Arizona when news of the American’s doping ban broke. “We were completely blindsided by it,” Lough says.
Yet Farah seems not to harbour any ill feelings towards Salazar for failing to warn him it was coming. “I don’t think he believed it,” he says.
What perhaps matters more to Farah is that we don’t overlook the fact that he was not directly implicated in the case Usada built against Salazar. “I’m not named in the reports and none of the witnesses are saying ‘I saw Mo Farah do this,’” he says. It is the best defence he has.
John Rogers is a great lad. His oul fella played football for fermanagh.
Ah lovely. Hope he’s exposed, exposed good and proper
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He won’t be.
5Live were already defending him this morning. They’ll brush it under the carpet.
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The Somalian, Mo Farah.
Nothing utterly damning but they compounded in my mind the sense that Farah and UK Athletics are completely dodgy and, as an aside, the lovely Jessica Ennis was probably clean.
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The sacrificial lamb is offered up, the system works.
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At least it wasn’t one of our horses. We can pride ourselves on our Olympic champions on being clean
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Chuckles
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