The uneasy holding pattern that British Athletics and Mo Farah have taken since doping allegations were made against Alberto Salazar on Wednesday will be finally broken on Saturday when Britain’s 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic champion speaks to the media for the first time since the BBC’s Panorama was broadcast. Ostensibly, Farah will be talking about Sunday’s Birmingham Grand Prix, where he is due to compete in the 1500m. There are unlikely to be many queries about his form.
Instead the questions will centre on whether Farah is about to ditch Salazar, who has coached him to double Olympic glory as well as three world titles since taking charge of his training since 2011. Salazar, who has also been a consultant to British Athletics since 2013, is alleged to have given Farah’s friend and training partner, Galen Rupp, the banned steroid testosterone when he was only 16.
Questions will also be asked – as they have been for days – over whether British Athletics will continue its relationship with Salazar. Perhaps, finally, we will get some answers.
There was at least some welcome directness on Friday from one British athlete, the world indoor 60m champion Richard Kilty, who will be competing in the 100m at Birmingham. Asked directly whether British Athletics should establish some distance between itself and Salazar, Kilty hesitated before answering: “I’ll probably get in trouble for commenting. That’s down to those guys to decide what they want to do. But maybe it would be the right thing.”
Kilty also admitted he would be happy if athletes’ therapeutic use exemption forms (TUEs) were made public. “I would have no problem with that,” he said. “I have nothing to hide and I am sure the majority of athletes wouldn’t either. I don’t have any TUEs, apart from seasonal asthma, so I’d be happy.”
The UK anti-doping chief executive, Nicole Sapstead, has suggested that such a policy would embarrass athletes who had private health issues unrelated to their performance – menstrual issues, for instance, or erectile dysfunction – but Kilty disagreed. “I wouldn’t think many young athletes would have that problem, maybe a few would be embarrassed,’ he said. “I haven’t got that problem.”
Kilty, who has established a reputation for his straight-talking, admitted he had been surprised by the revelations in the Panorama documentary, adding: “You can’t avoid it. It’s been everywhere. Since the programme you’re getting texts, people ringing and everyone you see is talking about it. It’s unavoidable at the moment.”
And so is Justin Gatlin. Kilty shrugged his shoulders when asked about another thorny issue in what has been a difficult week for athletics – the performance of the controversial American sprinter, who has been twice banned for doping offences. Gatlin stormed away with the men’s 100m in the Diamond League meeting in Rome on Thursday night in a time of 9.75sec – only 0.01sec outside his personal best set last month at the age of 33.
“He’s flying, isn’t he?” he said. “The vibe is that no one wants to see him winning.”
Kilty, though, is hopeful that athletics can still put on a brighter face in Birmingham. “Hopefully there can be some really great performances which will try to blow away the shadow that programme has caused.”
But Kilty will face a strong field in the men’s 100m that includes five athletes who have gone under the 10 second barrier in 2015, including the Frenchman Jimmy Vicaut, the American Mike Rodgers and the evergreen Kim Collins. Britain’s CJ Ujah and the European 200m champion Adam Gemili are also in the field. So far 99 men in history have run sub-10 seconds for 100m, but Kilty admits he is unlikely to take the 100th spot in Birmingham.
“I’ve had a tough training week,” he said. “It could happen but my body will be more primed to do that come the start of July. That said, I have run 10.09 already, so who knows? Fast times can happen in that field and I think it will take a sub-10 to win.”
Meanwhile, Dina Asher-Smith, who faces the four-times Olympic champion Allyson Felix over 200m on Sunday, said the Fifa revelations showed that athletics was far from alone in its troubles. “Every sport and every industry has difficult weeks,” she said. “If you look at football, it’s had a hard week too but at the same time there are millions of football fans that still love the game. I’m still happy, I’m still smiling.”
It remains to be seen whether Farah will be too when he faces the camerason Saturday. While there is no suggestion that he has done anything wrong, an abrupt clarity over his relationship with a coach who is now mired in controversy is certainly long overdue.
