Mo Farah Comments on Releasing Drug Tests to Public to Prove Innocence

Olympic champion Mo Farah wants his anti-doping blood test data to be made public despite British Athletics asking the competitors not to release their results, fearing that those athletes who don't make their tests public will be implicated as guilty.

“The decision to release my results is a personal one,” Farah told the Sunday Times, per the Press Association (via the Guardian). “I’ve always said that I’m happy to do what it takes to prove I’m a clean athlete.”

He added:

"

It’s sad that these allegations have been made at all because they bring down the sport I love, where most of the athletes don’t break the rules and work really hard to achieve what they do.

As someone who is tested all the time, I understand that it’s a big job for the authorities to do but it’s an important one as everyone - including athletes - needs to be confident that our sport is clean and fair. It is good to see the organisations investigating and I hope they can quickly get to the bottom of it.

"

Fellow athletes Jo Pavey, Lisa Dobriskey, Jenny Meadows, Freya Murray, Hatti Archer, Emma Jackson and Andy Baddeley are also requesting that results be made public.

This comes in response to a report from the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR that claimed the London Marathon had been won seven times in 12 years by runners with suspicious test results and revealed the widespread level of cheating in the sport. 

Farah, 32, won gold at the 2012 London Olympics in the 5,000m and 10,000m races and also swept those races at the 2013 Moscow World Championships. He finished eighth at the 2014 London Marathon and remains one of the top long-distance runners in the world. 

His decision to release his own results is a major step for transparency in the sport, especially among his English peers. His desire to have his results made public, along with several other top English runners, will certainly put pressure on those runners perhaps trying to cover their own tracks when it comes to doping.