London-UK (Cabays Media) Mo Farah, the double Olympic & double World champion and the UK’s greatest ever distance runner  has broken his silence to state his two missed tests before London 2012 were the only ones in his career – and to reiterate that he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs. Farah, who is training in Font Romeu in France, insisted his two missed tests, in 2010 and 2011, were the result of “simple mistakes” and not anything more suspicious.

In a statement Farah said: “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.”

As revealed by the Guardian yesterday, Farah has recruited crisis-management specialists from the public relations agency Freuds after being put on the back foot by a BBC Panorama documentary which accused his American coach, Alberto Salazar, of administering the banned steroid testosterone to his training partner Galen Rupp, along with a variety of other offences that either bent or broke anti-doping rules.

Freuds advised Farah to state his case more vigorously after his initial plan to focus on his training and ignore the rash of headlines about his coach became untenable when the Daily Mail revealed details of his two missed tests this week. And this statement, which has Freud’s fingerprints all over it, is a marked attempt to respond directly to the negative headlines while also reminding people of Farah’s human side.

He explained: “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.”

Mo Farah

Farah, who has not spoken in public for nearly a fortnight, since a press conference before the Birmingham Grand Prix, during which he pledged to get answers from Salazar, also confirmed that he had spoken to his coach.

“I went to Portland to speak to Alberto and demand answers,” he added. “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.”

He is not likely to speak again until Salazar releases his long-awaited riposte to Panorama. That was expected on Thursday, but has been repeatedly pushed back with opinion split on whether it will now come before or after the US Trials which begin on Thursday. Salazar and Rupp deny all the accusations made by the BBC, while Farah was never accused of wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Salazar has insisted Farah is still under his tutelage despite moving to France to train. “Mo is on a different training cycle, as he always is at this time of year,” he told the Oregonian newspaper. “So I send him to Europe to get accustomed to the time zone. This is how we’ve always done it.

“This winter Barry [Fudge, the head of endurance for British Athletics who reports Farah’s progress to Salazar] administered my workouts to Mo in Ethiopia for six weeks, and Mo broke the world two-mile record.”

Source: The Guardian

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