Rio 2016 drugs scandal: Mo Farah distances himself from busted coach as Jama Aden arrested after syringes and EPO found by police

MO FARAH was last night dragged into a new doping scandal.

Britain’s double Olympic champion has worked with athletics coach Jama Aden, who was yesterday arrested by Spanish cops in a dawn anti-doping raid.

Somalian Aden has been charged with having administered athletes with banned substances after the blood-boosting drug EPO, anabolic steroids and 60 syringes were found in six hotel rooms.

A Moroccan physio has also been arrested and charged at the hotel in Sabadell, north of Barcelona.

Farah and British Athletics last night distanced themselves from Aden, who coaches female  athlete of the year and world 1500m champion Genzebe Dibaba.

A spokesman for Farah said: “Mo is always with a British Athletics person and, of course, they will speak to Jama and be courteous if they bump in to each other but Jama has no input into Mo’s training whatsoever.”

Aden, once described as an “unofficial facilitator” for at least one of Farah’s training trips to Ethiopia, has not worked with British Athletics in 2016.

And last night BA issued a statement, insisting that “all Aden did last year, for a very short period of time, was to hold a stopwatch and shout out times to athletes as they completed their track sessions”.

They added: “There was no coaching or anything technical involved.

“As is common with athletics, different training groups will be on the same track at the same time, so sessions inevitably overlap or occur at the same time which would then have different groups training in close proximity.”

There is no suggestion Farah has done anything wrong.

Last year, there was controversy when Farah posed for a selfie with former world junior 1500m champion Hamza Driouch, a former athlete of Aden’s, who at the time was serving a two-year ban.

Yet British Athletics chiefs Neil Black and Barry Fudge said they had no idea who Driouch was.

Farah was also caught up in a drugs storm last year when his coach, Alberto Salazar, was accused of serious anti-doping violations, which he has vigorously denied.

The arrests came on the day WADA president Sir Craig Reedie confirmed they were investigating allegations of doping by the Russian and Chinese swimming teams.