Athletics-Salazar’s four-year ban upheld by CAS

September 16, 2021

(Reuters) -American Alberto Salazar, who has coached some of the world’s top long-distance runners, had his four-year suspension for a series of anti-doping rule violations upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), it said on Thursday.

The 63-year-old, who guided Britain’s Mo Farah to Olympic titles, was banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in 2019 for “orchestrating and facilitating” doping as head coach of the Nike Oregon Project, an elite camp designed primarily to develop U.S. endurance athletes.

CAS confirmed in a statement that a ban on endocrinologist Jeffrey Brown had also been upheld.

“CAS confirms the four-year bans imposed on Dr. Jeffrey Brown and Alberto Salazar for anti-doping rule violations,” the court said https://ift.tt/3lwF7MC on Thursday.

A full report by CAS is due to be published within days, the BBC reported.

USADA said at the time of the suspension that Salazar, who also coached American Olympian Matthew Centrowitz, trafficked the banned performance-enhancing substance testosterone to multiple athletes.

Salazar also tampered or attempted to tamper with Nike Oregon Project athletes’ doping control process, the agency said after concluding its four-year investigation.

Salazar won three consecutive New York City Marathons from 1980 before coaching a number of Olympians, including Farah, who won gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games.

Farah has never failed a drugs test and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Salazar stopped coaching Farah in 2017, when the runner decided to move back to England. Farah said at the time that the doping investigation was not the reason they parted ways.

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Additional reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; editing by Ed Osmond/Peter Rutherford)

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