Salazar booted from worlds after receiving 4-year doping ban

Renowned track coach Alberto Salazar, who trained four-time Olympic champion, Mo Farah, along with a gold medalist and other top contenders at this week’s world championships, has been kicked out of the competition after being handed a four-year ban in a case long pursued by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. USADA said in a news release early Tuesday that an arbitration panel decided on the four-year penalty for Salazar and endocrinologist Jeffrey Brown for, among other violations, possessing and trafficking testosterone while training top runners at the Nike Oregon Project (NOP).

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USADA ban

Brown did consulting work for the NOP and was a personal physician for some of the runners. Among the seven runners listed as members of Salazar’s team are Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who won the 10,000-meter gold medal on Saturday night, and is entered to run later this week in the 1,500; and Donavan Brazier and Clayton Murphy of the U.S., each of whom are scheduled to run in the 800-meter final Tuesday. The USADA ban went into effect Monday, and track’s governing body, the IAAF, moved quickly to revoke Salazar’s credential for the final six days in Doha. The Athletics Integrity Unit, which oversees anti-doping in track, was preparing to notify the Salazar athletes that they could not associate with their coach because of his ban.

In a statement released by NOP, Salazar said he was shocked by the arbitration outcome, and that he would appeal. He said throughout a six-year investigation, he and his athletes “endured unjust, unethical and highly damaging treatment from the USADA. The Oregon Project has never and will never permit doping,” Salazar said.

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Hassan released a statement saying she was aware of the USADA investigation when she joined Salazar’s team “and have always had a clean conscience, knowing we are being monitored to the absolute fullest by USADA and” the World Anti-Doping Agency. “I am saddened by the timing of USADA as it brings my championship out of balance,” she said.

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Sir Mo Farah's statement 

On Tuesday, Farah released a statement saying he has “no tolerance for anyone who breaks the rules or crosses a line.” Salazar also coached the 2012 Olympic silver medalist Galen Rupp of the U.S., who in the past has strongly denied any wrongdoing. The 61-year-old Cuban born coach was a college star at Oregon, who went on to win four major marathon titles, in New York and Boston, from 1980-82. USADA’s dogged pursuit of him in a difficult case that never directly implicated any of his athletes was a reminder of how to track’s doping issues stretch well beyond the Russian scandal that has overtaken the sport over the last several years. The other four Salazar athletes in Doha this week are from Ethiopia (Yomif Kejelcha), Germany (Konstanze Klosterhalfen) and the United States (Jessica Hull and Craig Engels). USADA said it relied on more than 2,000 exhibits between the two cases and that proceedings included nearly 5,800 pages of transcripts.

“The athletes in these cases found the courage to speak out and ultimately exposed the truth,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said. “While acting in connection with the Nike Oregon Project, Mr. Salazar and Dr. Brown demonstrated that winning was more important than the health and wellbeing of the athletes they were sworn to protect.”

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