There is no evidence that Mo Farah cheated – but sometimes people are judged by the company they keepShortly after revelations first surfaced about Alberto Salazar being investigated by the US Anti-Doping Agency in 2015, I asked a UK Athletics contact whether they feared reputational damage if he was ever convicted. “Of course,” came the reply. “But we’ve gone all in on Alberto and Nike.” Long past the witching hour in Doha on Monday night, that decision came back to haunt them. And with the legendary American coach now banned for four years for “orchestrating and facilitating prohibited doping conduct”, UKA now looks desperately short of chips.After all it was Neil Black, UKA’s performance director, who used to travel at...
The Newmarket-based Ismail Mohammed has been suspended from endurance racing for two years by the FEIReaders may be surprised to learn that bans imposed on people by one horsey sport are not automatically reciprocated by others. Whether this situation should be allowed to continue has become a pressing one for the British Horseracing Authority, following the news that Ismail Mohammed, a trainer based in Newmarket, has been suspended from endurance racing for two years over a doping offence involving testosterone.In a decision reached last month by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), Mohammed was disciplined, along with one other, for a positive test taken from the horse Shaddad at an event in Suffolk last year. The test found 35 nanograms of...
Infamous ex-trainer has spoken of his desire to return to the sport and insists ‘I’m a different person’Mahmood al-Zarooni is seeking a pardon from the British Horseracing Authority and wants to train again, despite having been the subject of a worldwide eight-year ban for giving anabolic steroids to racehorses. “The past six years have been very tough on me and my family,” he has told the Daily Mirror. “I would be grateful to the BHA if they grant me a pardon.” Related: Jamie Kah says women jockeys are given rough ride in ‘backward’ Britain Thirsk Continue reading...
Anti-doping programmes in Britain will be the priority as two jockeys in Ireland are given five-year suspensions after returning positive tests The British Horseracing Authority said on Friday that “an overall review of the anti-doping education program” for jockeys will be “a priority” in 2019, and that a review of the penalty structure for riders testing positive for cocaine and recreational drugs could be included “if appropriate”. For the moment, however, the BHA has “no immediate plans” to follow the lead of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB), its Irish counterpart, which said this week that its new standard punishment for a cocaine positive will be a five-year ban.There has been a slight rise in the number of jockeys returning...
Dick Pound’s defence of his latest successor as Wada president, Craig Reedie, just doesn’t stand upEncouraging news for the embattled Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, as the founder Wada president, Dick Pound, rides eye-catchingly to his defence. By way of recap, Russia last week missed the deadline to allow the World Anti‑Doping Agency access to the Moscow laboratory that was at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme. This deadline was itself a bizarre act of faith on Wada’s part, given that Russia has failed to comply with two crucial recommendations of the McLaren report which uncovered the vast scale of their cheating.Anyway, the predictably missed deadline has gone down like the proverbial sandwich with many national anti-doping authorities,...