Sir Mo Farah has confirmed that he will not be soliciting the help of Alberto Salazar who has coached the Brit since 2011 despite the fact that Salazar, as a former elite marathon runner, is an expert in the field.
The 10,000m World Champion will instead be coached by Gary Lough, who coached his wife Paula Radcliffe to the marathon world record.
Salazar’s name has often been linked with scandals surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Currently, Galen Rupp, who regularly trained alongside Farah is embroiled in a drugs investigation alongside Salazar, which could see Rupp stripped of his Olympic silver medal at London 2012.
While the investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency does not involve Farah who beat Rupp to gold in London, he recently found himself in the midst of controversy when the performance enhancing supplement L-Carnitine, that he took in the lead-up to his first ever marathon, was not properly recorded by his doctor.
According to Salazar L-Carnitine can dramatically boost performance but the supplement is legal as long as the dosage of 50 milliliters per six hours is not exceeded.
Despite this many of the doping infringements surrounding Salazar have been due to the administering of legal drugs over the allowable limit.
Salazar denies the accusations against him. “I do not use supplements that are banned. L-carnitine is a widely available, legal nutritional supplement that is not banned by WADA.”
However, when Salazar was involved in numerous drugs cases back in 2015, Farah opted to stand by his coach. Though now it seems in an effort to preserve his reputation, that Farah will trade Salazar for marathon coach staff provided by British Athletics.
Next year Farah will be looking to improve upon his eighth-place position from 2014 at the London Marathon and organizers of the prestigious event have tipped the Newham and Essex Beagles athlete to strike gold.
In a sport which has often been tainted by the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, Farah now finds himself in a position where he must defend himself as a clean athlete and the need to do so is even more necessary now that he has received a knighthood.
Despite this Farah has claimed that such rumours about drugs have been circling around ever since he took to Salazar in 2011. “It’s nothing new. Tell me something new. Since 2011 it’s been the same stuff.”
Though now that it has been suggested that Farah’s doctor who administered Farah the supplement L-Carnitine may be guilty of fiddling with medical records, it may prove harder than expected for Farah to shake off his association with Salazar.
