60 2GM Monday February 21 2022 | the timesSportAthletics
A
blanket of light cloud
hangs over the brilliant
blue track that is home to
the most prominent sprint
group in world athletics,
but a thunderbolt is about to strike.
It is Friday morning, and Rana
Reider and the stars of the American
coach’s Tumbleweed Track Club are
due to assemble at Hodges Stadium,
on the University of North Florida
campus. But 40 minutes before they
arrive, news breaks of a ten-year
doping ban for one of their group.
Blessing Okagbare was among the
favourites for the women’s Olympic
100m title in Tokyo last summer,
having run one of the fastest times in
history at the Nigerian trials in June.
But she tested positive for both
human growth hormone and the
blood-boosting drug, EPO, in the
build-up to the Games, and at 33 her
career now appears to be over.
Packages containing the two drugs
were found in an apartment here in
Jacksonville, with a so far unnamed
male athlete also implicated. The man
who sent them, Eric Lira, of El Paso,
Texas, was identified last month in a
New York court. Now that supplying
elite athletes with performance-
enhancing drugs is a federal offence
in the United States, Lira faces up to
ten years in jail.
This, however, is only one of two
dark clouds hovering over a sprint
group that boasts Olympic and world
champions such as Andre De Grasse,
as well as one of Britain’s finest
sprinters, Adam Gemili.
In November, it emerged that
Reider was being investigated by the
US Center For SafeSport into
allegations of sexual misconduct.
UK Athletics responded by warning
the British athletes in Reider’s group
that they would be removed from the
lottery-funded World Class
Programme unless they found a new
coach. Daryll Neita, a finalist in the
women’s 100m in Tokyo, left and
joined Reider’s former deputy, Marco
Airale, in Italy. The top French
sprinter, Jimmy Vicaut, did the same.
But Gemili and Laviai Nielsen have
chosen to stay, forcing UKA to follow
through with its threat.
Since then, more allegations against
Reider have emerged. The Times
revealed that a doctor working with
the British team at the World Junior
Championships in Eugene in 2014
raised concerns to the governing body
about Reider, then 44 and married,
amid claims of an intimate relationship
with an 18-year-old female athlete.
In an email, the doctor said Reider
and the athlete had been seen by staff
holding hands, adding that she was
being isolated from the group. There
were also claims that she had been
seen leaving Reider’s hotel room and
was being provided with inappropriate
private therapy sessions. The doctorhammer came down then. And he
[Reider] knew when I reached out. I’d
been in Austria all summer. But when
I got back to the US I said, ‘Hey, we
need to meet ASAP.’ ”
By then, reveals Taylor, he had
received notification from the Center
for SafeSport that his coach was
under investigation.
“Yeah, so we got an email saying
they were doing an investigation, and
saying that if we were to meet it
needed to also be with somebody else;
a witness or something,” he says.
“But I’d worked with him for more
than ten years. I just needed to see
him, get it off my chest and separate.”
They met at a Starbucks, close to
the university. Did Reider echo his
lawyer in claiming the allegations
were untrue? “To be honest, I just
wanted to say my piece,” Taylor says.
“It was very much a one-way
conversation. I wanted to get this off
my chest and make it clear why I was
stepping away. He did say, ‘Everything
is going to be dropped and I’m going
to continue coaching,’ and wished me
the best. But I just wanted to say what
I wanted to say. I can’t be trying to
magnify the voice of athletes and
then contradicting myself, because
that is going to hurt my credibility.
How can I say to athletes, ‘Come to
me if you’ve got a problem’?”
During the Olympics, Taylor and
Reider had a similarly uncomfortable
conversation about Okagbare. “It was
the first time Rana and I had spoken
since my injury,” Taylor says. “It was
just him, declaring he had no
knowledge of all this. He said he was
as surprised as I was. But I made it
very clear I don’t need to becompared the behaviour to grooming,
citing the “power differential” amid
concerns that the athlete, although
aged 18, was still a “vulnerable adult”.
At the time Reider was contracted
to work for UKA as the head of
sprints. Months later, his contract was
not renewed, with UKA now
admitting officials failed to investigate
the matter properly.
The storm engulfing Reider’s
training group demands further
investigation and, before travelling to
Jacksonville, I requested interviews
with Reider, Gemili and Nielsen, via
their representatives. It was a no from
Reider and Gemili, with Nielsen’s
agent yet to respond. Gemili has not
spoken publicly about Okagbare, the
investigation into a coach he has
worked with since 2017 or the
decision by UKA to remove him from
the World Class Programme.
Sources, however, had said that the
story was about to escalate and here,
little more than half an hour before
Reider and his athletes were due to
train, it did just that with the
Okagbare bombshell.
When Reider arrives at Hodges
Stadium shortly before 10am, he
seems untroubled by the news,Tumbleweed athletes
Adam Gemili (GB, 28) World
Championship gold medallist,
dropped from UK Athletics’ World
Class Programme after staying with
Reider’s Tumbleweed Track ClubLaviai Nielsen (GB, 25) World
Championship silver medallist. Also
removed from the national set-up
after refusing to part with ReiderDaryll Neita (GB, 25) Cut ties with
Reider after being instructed to do
so by UK AthleticsOmar McLeod (Jamaica, 27) Former
Olympic and world 110m hurdles
champion, left Tumbleweed earlier
this monthAndre De Grasse (Canada, 27)
Olympic 200m champion, has
trained at Tumbleweed since 2018Christian Taylor (US, 31) Double
Olympic triple jump gold medallist
and current world champion, called
sexual abuse allegations against
Reider “disturbing” in 2021Trayvon Bromell (USA, 26) The
sixth-fastest ever over 100m, moved
to Tumbleweed in 2019Blessing Okagbare (Nigeria, 33)
Removed from 100m semi-finals at
Tokyo Olympics after failed drug testtooting the horn of his silver Mercedes
to a staff member before parking. But
his mood quickly changes. “I’m not
talking to you, dude,” he tells me after
briefly lowering his car window. His
response to Okagbare’s suspension?
“Good,” he says, adding that it means
“nothing” to his group.
Reider then remains in his car for
another few minutes, making phone
calls. When he does eventually walk
towards the main track gate, he
ignores further questions. Moments
later, Gemili strides into the car park.
He complains immediately that his
agent has already said he wants to
focus on his training and dismisses
the suggestion that Okagbare had
been a training partner. “F*** off,” he
says, before disappearing inside the
main stadium building.
Minutes after that Ervin Lewis, the
deputy director of athletics for the
university, appears, accompanied by a
police officer.
Before coming here, The Times had
asked Lewis if Reider’s group was still
training at Hodges Stadium in the
wake of the allegations of sexual
misconduct. Curiously, he advised
asking “Coach Reider” directly, cc’ing
him in his reply. So Reider was asked,
and did not respond.
Beyond explaining that he is “just
here to keep the peace”, the perfectly
friendly police officer does and says
nothing. Instead he listens to Lewis
being asked if the university was
indeed prepared to allow Reider to
continue working at a facility used by
large numbers of young student
athletes, many of whom are female,
while the investigation is in progress.
Lewis scoffs at the question, stating
that they are only “allegations” and
all the appropriate legal checks have
been made. When then asked if
perhaps more specific allegations of a
sexual nature would be tolerated, he
offers only a blank look. It is
something of a tumbleweed moment.
By now, a further request for an
interview with Gemili has been
made to the 28-year-old sprinter’s
agent. Perhaps Gemili would like
to meet for a more civilised
chat at a nearby hotel? The
invitation is ignored.
One now former member
of the Tumbleweed Track
Club has agreed to meet
me, however. Christian
Taylor, a double Olympic
and four-times world
triple jump champion,
was, until last year, the
longest-serving
member of the club.
Now 31, the
American first
worked withReider when he persuaded him to join
him at the University of Florida in- Taylor is also the president and
founder of the Athletics Association,
an international organisation set up
in 2019 to represent the rights of elite
track and field athletes.
As he explains in a coffee shop in a
quiet suburb of Jacksonville, Taylor
quit Reider’s group last year when he
learnt of the SafeSport investigation.
He now trains under the guidance of
his wife, Beate, an Austrian former
Olympic sprint hurdler, at a track in a
different part of town. And he reveals
that Omar McLeod, the Jamaican
Olympic and world champion hurdler,
has left Reider’s group to join him
there. Such is his candour, Taylor
expresses surprise that the British
athletes ignored their national
federation and remain with Reider.
An achilles injury that denied
him the chance to win a third
consecutive Olympic title
in Tokyo meant Taylor
stopped training with
Reider’s group last
May. But he says the
decision to split
with his coach
was a “snowball
effect” of the
Okagbare
doping case
and the
allegations of
sexual
misconduct
that
followed.
“The grand slam was the
SafeSport thing,” he says. “That’s
when I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ The
The medal factory
tainted by doping,
abuse and ‘drama’
Special report Matt Lawton in Jacksonville at the training
camp of Rana Reider, the coach under investigation who British
sprinter Adam Gemili refuses to leave despite losing his funding
Taylor left Reider
after a “snowball”
of allegations