Mo Farah facing pressure for missing drug tests in 2012

Mo Farah facing fresh questions over missed drug tests before London 2012

• Farah reportedly said he did not hear doorbell when testers visited
• UK Anti-Doping says officials are instructed to keep trying for an hour

The double Olympic gold medallist Mo Farah is likely to face fresh questions over two missed drug tests in the run-up to the London 2012 Games after anti-doping officials confirmed they would have tried repeatedly to rouse him during the hour in question.

Nicole Sapstead, the UK Anti-Doping chief executive, said Ukad was not at liberty to discuss individual cases where athletes had not reached the threshold of missing the three tests that would lead to a possible four-year ban, but confirmed it was “not common for athletes to miss two tests” in a 12-month period.

Sapstead was reacting to reports in the Daily Mail, which has seen an email exchange between Ukad and Farah’s representatives suggesting the runner missed one test in 2010 and another in early 2011 shortly after he had joined Alberto Salazar’s training group in Oregon.

The paper said Farah had stated he did not hear the doorbell when missing his second test and his agent, Ricky Simms, submitted video evidence filmed in Farah’s house in which he tried to show it was difficult to hear the doorbell from his client’s bedroom.

Under the so-called “whereabouts” system introduced in 2009, elite British athletes have to specify where they will be for an hour a day in each 24-hour period. During that time testers can turn up unannounced.

Graham Arthur, Ukad’s legal director, said the agency followed a “detailed protocol” if an athlete did not answer the door to a doping control officer immediately at the prescribed hour.

“They are required to make reasonable efforts to locate the athlete. Ringing the doorbell every 10 or 15 minutes, knocking and staying for the full hour,” he said. “We often ask them to stay just past the hour on the off-chance the athlete is running late. We want to collect the sample, we don’t want them to miss the test.”

Arthur said if Ukad had evidence an athlete was deliberately avoiding testers it would attempt to take action under Wada’s code for evasion, which carries a ban of up to four years. But he conceded such cases could be difficult to prove, with Ukad having to prove to a standard of “comfortable satisfaction” the athlete was deliberately evading the testers.

Sapstead added: “One missed test isn’t serious for us. Clearly if an athlete acquires a second one, it escalates our concern because they are that much nearer to three. They have three chances at this before they face a sanction.”

Ukad has also defended its policy of maintaining the anonymity of athletes who have missed one or two tests during the 12-month period.

“It has been our position that while we’re happy to be transparent about the overall number, we’re never going to get into the detail of how many athletes are on one or two or whether they are assigned to those specific sports. It is not common for athletes to miss two tests but it does happen,” said Sapstead.

Ukad published figures showing that during 2010 there were 43 missed tests among the 394 athletes across all sports in its elite testing pool. In 2011 it rose to 66 of 365 and in 2012 stood at 40 of 361. Each of those athletes would have been tested at least three times in a 12-month period.

Arthur added: “Three strikes is the rule. That’s the formula that has been agreed by Wada, sport and government that strikes the correct balance between their privacy and an athlete who might make one or two genuine mistakes and an athlete who evades the system. Once an athlete has made one mistake, our experience is that is usually enough and they comply with the system after that.”

The revelation that Farah was one missed test away from missing his career-defining appearance at London 2012 is the latest headache for the athlete in the wake of claims by the BBC’s Panorama that his coach, Salazar, and his training partner, Galen Rupp, broke anti-doping rules.

Among the charges against Salazar are that he gave the banned steroid testosterone to Rupp when the runner was 16, coached Rupp to get a therapeutic use exemption so he could use an intravenous drip before the 2011 world championships and flouted several other doping rules. Salazar and Rupp deny all allegations and Farah has not been accused of anything illegal.