Mo Farah: make an example of countries who flout drugs rules

Mo Farah will compete in the Glasgow Grand Prix on Saturday (Getty Images)

Mo Farah has called on the authorities to get tougher with drug cheats and says countries deserve to be banned if they fail to adhere to the rules.

Russian athletes have already been suspended from all global competition by the IAAF and this week, less than six months from the Olympics, its president Sebastian Coe said he was ready to hand out the same punishment to Kenya’s track and field athletes if they are declared non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) code.

“As a country, they just have to follow the rules,” said Farah. “If they can’t follow the rules then tough on them. You have to set an example.”

Last week, Kenya missed a deadline to prove to Wada it was doing everything in its power to tackle doping in the wake of a litany of failed tests.

The chief executive of Athletics Kenya, Isaac Mwangi, asked this week to be relieved of his duties pending an investigation into allegations he bribed athletes in order to reduce their doping sanctions. He has denied any wrongdoing. The organisation’s former president Isaiah Kiplagat and two other officials are already being investigated by authorities over possible misdemeanours.

Farah, who ahead of last season shifted his traditional training base from Kenya to Ethiopia, said of the latest Kenyan revelations: “It’s not a nice thing obviously but as athletes and certain countries, we can only say we do the right thing.

“As a country, we have to set an example and follow the rules. As British athletes, we have rules. I wish they could follow the same rules. And if they don’t follow the rules, obviously it’s bad for the athletes.”

Farah joked that a ban for Kenya at the Olympics would “make things easier for me”, since the nation’s long-distance runners – along with Ethiopian athletes – are the biggest threat to the Londoner’s defence of his double Olympic titles over 5,000m and 10,000m.

The 32-year-old will get his track season under way at the Glasgow Grand Prix today in the event’s finale, the 3,000m.

Farah has already made it clear he will forego the World Indoor Championships in Portland, his run in Scotland being his only indoor foray on the track this season in the build-up to the Olympics.

He described Glasgow as “the start of the road to Rio” and is confident he can continue his dominance of the track, which last season culminated in double world titles in Beijing.

“I feel in similar shape to last year if I compare the times last year I was running at training camp,” he said. “I’m in decent shape, and it’s every athlete’s dream to go to the Olympics and do well. That’s what keeps me going every day. It makes me train. I’m quite excited to go to an Olympics and see what I can do in the 10,000m, and then we’ll see in the 5,000m.”

Rio de Janeiro could yet prove to be Farah’s swan song on the track. He is unsure if he will carry on to the World Championships in London in 2017 or switch back to the marathon, as he did at the start of the 2014 season.

“I’m definitely more motivated than ever,” he said. “I just want to keep on winning medals and making my country proud. It would be nice to end on a high on the track and see what happens.

“But I’m getting on a bit so it’s not as easy. If I look back at my diary from two years ago, it was a bit different. I was a bit fresher, I could do a lot more back-to-back stuff than I do run. Now I can’t do back-to-back runs, I have to recover, take it easy.”