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Yet again, athletics has made the news, not through the feats of its athletes, but through the taint of doping. American coach Alberto
Salazar is the latest coach to be implicated in a plan to help his athletes take a variety of performance enhancing drugs.
The BBC program Panorama alleges that Salazar both encouraged and helped Olympic medalist Galen Rupp to use a range of drugs,
including testosterone and prednisone. He also assisted Rupp in avoiding detection by providing him with intravenous drips, which
mask the effects of the other drugs; and are accordingly banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the U.S. Anti-Doping
Agency (USADA).
Cuban-born Salazar responded by producing a point-by-point refutation of the allegations, citing Rupp’s diagnosed asthmatic condition
and thyroid complaint as reasons for the application of the prednisone, as well as his own ethical rectitude as evidence of his
innocence. Salazer claims the allegations are based on nothing but “slander and hearsay’.
The story has a way to run, as Salazar is also the coach of Mo Farah, British runner and winner of the London 2012 Olympic golds for the
5,000m and 10,000m. While Farah is not under investigation, he has been advised to cut Salazar loose. However, some are questioning
why Farah missed two drug tests in the same year. A third miss would see him potentially banned for two years. Farah claims that on
one of those days he did not hear the doorbell.
Whilst the allegations against Salazar are unproven and there is no suggestion that Farah has ever taken any banned substances, the
public’s trust in the words of athletes and their coaches in a variety of sports is probably pretty close to zero. They have heard the same
protestations too many times. Athletes who can look into a camera and lie about their use of banned substances are as common as the
BODY HACK:
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST
DRUGS IN ATHLETICS
BY TIMOTHY MOTTRAM
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TOUCHLINE
ISSUE 21 | AUGUST 2015