Suspicion follows Hassan and Klosterhalfen

Sifan Hassan and Konstanze Klosterhalfen contest trackfinals at the IAAF World Championships today but won’t be able to run away from the suspicion surrounding them.The Dutch Hassan and Germany’s Klosterhalfen are both members of the Nike Oregon Project (NOP) training group whose head coach Alberto Salazar has been banned for four years for doping-rules related offences.No NOP athlete has ever failed a doping test but the group which in the past also included British six-time Olympic and four-time world champion Mo Farah has been surrounded by mystery and suspicion.Hassan, at the NOP since 2016, has already won the 10,000 metres in Doha and now seeks to add the 1,500m title. Klosterhalfen joined the group last year and hopes for 5,000m silverware.Even though they have not been implicated in the probe which also pre-dates their NOP entry, they will face questions and deep suspicion, just as NOP runner Donovan Brazier after his 800m title earlier in the week.A first taste of that came after their heats Wednesday as other runners wondered why they had joined a group tainted by the allegations for a decade in the first place.“I’m not going to be the judge and jury of who is cheating but if you’re closely affiliated with somebody who is serving a four year ban and someone points a finger at you and says ‘maybe you’re cheating’ I don’t feel sorry for you,” said former 1,500m world champion Jessica Simpson who is in Hassan’s event.Klosterhalfen’s German team-mate Hanna Klein, who went out in the 5,000m heats, welcomed that the Salazar news broke during the Doha championships and said Klosterhalfen has to make her own decision as a mature athlete. “It is her path — I have a different philosophy,” she said in the direction of Klosterhalfen. “I don’t know what Alberto Salazar hasbeen doing, I have never trained there. But it was no secret that he worked in borderline areas, to say the least.” Sebastian Coe, president of the ruling body IAAF, has also urged athletes to take mature and wise decisions concerning their training environment.“If you are coached by somebody, you should be absolutely comfortable that you are working in an environment that’s safe and secure and is not going to damage your own reputation. An athlete should ask those questions,” the two-time Olympic 1,500m champion Coe said.But Klosterhalfen, who has made big progress since joining the NOP and has set six national records this year indoors and outdoors, sees no issues in training there.“I can only talk about what I see. It is the best team in the world,” she said of the NOP after reaching the 5,000m final, adding that “others are dealing with it (the affair) far more than us athletes.”But she could soon find herself being probed as International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said the IOC will ask the WorldAnti-Doping Agency (WADA) whether it has looked at all NOP athletes in the affair he named “worrying” on Thursday night.