Mo Farah’s credibility has come under major scrutiny after it emerged he changed his response to questions posed by US Anti-Doping Agency investigators about controversial L-carnitine injections he received in 2014.
Documents to be unveiled by a BBC Panorama investigation on Monday evening show how, in 2015, Farah had repeatedly denied being injected with the legal supplement by Dr Rob Chakraverty ahead of the London Marathon a year earlier.
However, according to the BBC, after leaving the room following an interview with USADA that lasted nearly five hours, transcripts detail how he returned following a brief discussion with UK Athletics’ head of endurance Barry Fudge and accepted he had taken the supplement.
It has been revealed that Mo Farah changed his response to investigators over injections
According to the BBC, Farah, who was coached by now-banned Alberto Salazar at the time, was asked specifically if he had received the injection before the race.
A USADA investigator asked: ‘If someone said that you were taking L-carnitine injections, are they not telling the truth?’
According to the transcript, Farah replied: ‘Definitely not telling the truth, 100 per cent. I’ve never taken L-carnitine injections at all.’
Investigator: ‘Are you sure that Alberto Salazar hasn’t recommended that you take L-carnitine injections?’
Farah: ‘No, I’ve never taken L-carnitine injections.’
Investigator: ‘You’re absolutely sure that you didn’t have a doctor put a butterfly needle… into your arm… and inject L-carnitine a few days before the London marathon?’
Farah repeatedly denied being injected with the supplement by Dr Rob Chakraverty (above), who says he did not break any rules
Farah: ‘No. No chance.’
Panorama reveal that Farah then left the interview and following a conversation with Fudge returned to the room and rowed back on his denials.
In the transcript, Farah is quoted as saying: ‘So I just wanted to come clear, sorry guys, and I did take it at the time and I thought I didn’t…’
He is asked: ‘So you received L-carnitine… before the London marathon?’
Farah: ‘Yeah.’
Farah added: ‘There was a lot of talk before… and Alberto’s always thinking about ‘What’s the best thing?’
Investigator: ‘… a few days before the race… with… Alberto present and your doctor (Rob Chakraverty, who was chief medical officer of UKA at the time and currently at the FA) and Barry Fudge and you’re telling us all about that now but you didn’t remember any of that when I… kept asking you about this?’
Chakraverty -who denies breaking any rules – was chief medical officer of UKA at the time and is now currently at the FA
Farah: ‘It all comes back for me, but at the time I didn’t remember.’
The sudden backtrack from Farah will set off further alarm bells in the long-running scrutiny of his relationship with Salazar, who was banned for four years for anti-doping violations in 2019. Farah, who won four Olympic gold medals in his time with Salazar between 2011 and 2017, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The issue surrounding L-carnitine and Farah was already deeply contentious. The naturally-occurring amino acid can speed up metabolism if injected directly into the bloodstream and is allowed under WADA rules so long as infusions or injections are below 50ml every six hours. In 2017, following a Sunday Times report that Farah had received an infusion of L-carnitine in 2014, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry called in Farah’s team for clarification.
The committee was told the volume was a compliant 13.5ml, but Dr Charaverty failed to record it – an oversight that has left Farah and his team open to questioning. This latest revelation that Farah changed his story about the 2014 injection – Salazar, Fudge, Dr Charaverty and former UKA performance director Neil Black were all in the hotel room at the time – makes the situation even more uncomfortable for Farah.
The revelation causes further alarm due to the scrutiny of his relationship with Alberto Salazar
The Panorama broadcast also raises questions about the behaviour of UKA officials, who had internally queried whether the L-carnitine injections were within the ‘spirit of the sport’. That they ultimately proceeded would indicate they were comfortable using the supplement.
On April 6, 2014, Fudge, who it emerges had sourced L-carnitine from a Salazar contact in Switzerland, wrote: ‘Whilst this process is completely within the Wada code there is a philosophical argument about whether this is within the ‘spirit of the sport…’.
He added: ‘Although Alberto and Mo have expectations about doing this, we are not at a point where we… can’t pull out.’
Neil Black, whose public support of Salazar in the wake of a damning Panorama broadcast in 2015 contributed to his departure last year, wrote: ‘Should we really be trialling this process so close to the London Marathon? … That’s before we even think about the spirit of sport.’
Dr Chakraverty wrote: ‘… it would have been better to have trialled it in someone first.
‘I understand [Salazar] is keen but… we should be asking him to follow this advice.’
Fudge’s role in this saga has come under renewed scrutiny. The endurance head, who served as Salazar’s prime point of contact with UKA, is said by Panorama to have not originally disclosed his trip to Switzerland to USADA investigators when questioned in 2015.
Farah won four Olympic gold medals in his time with Salazar between 2011 and 2017
When asked if he got it from Pete Julian, a coach at the Oregon Project, he had said: ‘No, it was a prescription-based product.’
He then returned to the interview room the next day, and said: ‘I don’t think I told you guys enough… I don’t think I told you anything that wasn’t correct, I just feel I probably should expand on it a bit more.’
MP Damian Collins, the former chair of the DCMS select committee which in 2017 examined Farah’s L-carnitine injection, believes the subject needs revisiting.
He said: ‘This very specific medicine was required, sourced at great difficulty, given against the initial advice of the doctor. But yet, no-one keeps any records of it and everyone decides to keep quiet about it.
‘I think this is something that should be looked at in some seriousness.’
He added: ‘I think it leaves UK Athletics in a very difficult position. And this seems, to me, that UK Athletics effectively… gave Alberto Salazar… sort of total control over the preparation and training of some of our most celebrated athletes with not very much oversight from people at UK Athletics as to what they were doing and whether they were acting in the best interests of either the sport or that individual athlete and that’s a failing on their part.’
Salazar is currently appealing a four-year ban from athletics for multiple doping violations
Referring to his altered answer in his USADA interview, and the claim that Farah had not listed L-carnitine on his doping control form after the 2014 London Marathon, a letter from his lawyers to Panorama read: ‘Mr Farah understood the question one way and as soon as he left the room he asked Mr Fudge and immediately returned… to clarify and it is plain the investigators were comfortable with this explanation.
‘It is not against [Wada] rules to take [L-carnitine] as a supplement within the right quantities. Mr Farah… is one of the most tested athletes in the UK, if not the world, and has been required to fill in numerous doping forms. He is a human being and not a robot. That is relevant … if in fact something was missed from the form. Interviews are not memory tests.’
In a statement Dr Chakraverty said: ‘I have not contravened any [world anti-doping] rules, and have always acted in the best interests of those I treat.
‘The evidence I provided to [MPs] was an honest account – including an acknowledgement that my usual standard of record keeping slipped due to heavy work commitments and travel.
‘The GMC reviewed this and concluded that the case required no further action.’
Salazar, who is appealing his four-year ban, told Panorama: ‘No Oregon Project athlete used a medication against the spirit of the sport. Any medication taken was done so on the advice and under the supervision of registered medical professionals.’