Paula Radcliffe's Take on Alberto Salazar's Ban Brings Up More Questions Than Answers.

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I write quite a bit about doping in athletics especially around the the golden boys and girls of UK athletics. Last week Mo Farah's former coach Alberto Salazar who is coach with the Nike Oregon Project was found guilty of "orchestrating and facilitating prohibited doping conduct".
The whole world and their dog knew he was guilty and a dark cloud had formed over many of the athletes he was training over the last few years. Mo was a run of the mill athlete coming 6th and 7th in world championships. He goes to Oregon to join the Nike Oregon Project and he goes on to become Britains most decorated athlete breaking record after record. Mo Farah has always denied doping and he has never been found with drugs in his system. His diet changing was the biggest difference he stressed. Hmmmmm. There was a time when drug testers were at this front door ringing the bell for an hour but Mo was "asleep" at the time and didn't hear the ringing. Mo's hired a new coach when allegations about Salazar started surfacing a few years back. He had to distance himself from the the man who would tarnish his stellar reputation. So he went with a new coach by the name of Gary Lough. Gary is Paula Ratcliffe's husband. So when Paula was asked about the whole Alberto Salazar affair by Gabby Logan on BBC she made a bumbling attempt at an answer. It is worth pointing out also that Paula was also sponsored by Nike during her peak years as an elite athlete. But her answer was really surprising.
She basically said it was no big deal. Just the head coach of working for the biggest company in the world got caught doping.
It was like she was defending him and the anti doping agency were just trying to make up for messing up Christian Colemans case. It was extraordinary she called him by his first name as if they were friends.

We've all talked about in the past about how Alberto, in particular, will push it right up to that line. He's been very conscious of trying to find out where the limits lie and how close he can push it to get those last little bits of gains to compete with athletes that, in his mind, in other parts of the world, are really cheating. He's overstepped that.
He probably should hold his hands up and say, 'I did, I overstepped. The rules were broken, I will now take the punishment for that'.
Because no athletes have been sanctioned, have real anti-doping [rules been] transgressed by athletes? I don't think so. Otherwise we would have seen athletes banned at this point."The athletes themselves have done nothing wrong at this point.

Here is some audio of the interview and reaction

In 2015 Paula was at the centre of a storm. There was allegations of a leaked list that had been send to a German newspaper of a number of elite British athletes with suspicious blood values. MP Jesse Norman had inadvertently named Radcliffe in parliament so Paula had to go public and deny the allegations. One test that was carried out was directly after a training trip to Kenya with our friend Mo. Paula issued statement denying any wrongdoing and was subsequently cleared have any wrongdoing by the IAAF. This was due to the results being misinterpreted. The story went away. However after this interview it digs it back up again

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The best part of this saga is this is that this is the start of the end. Nike are backing Salazar's appeal because Salazar is said to be mates with Phil Knight , the Nike founder. It is now time to start looking at Salazar's athletes. It will make for interesting results. .