JAMA ADEN, the coach of world 1500m record-holder Genzebe Dibaba, was arrested this week in Spain amid allegations of doping.
Police and anti-doping officers pounced on the Somalian at a hotel in Sabadell in Catalonia at the culmination of a joint ‘Operation Rial’ with athletics authorities that dates back to 2013.
Bags of erythropoietin, the blood-boosting drug, were found in half a dozen hotel rooms together with steroids and syringes, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, and within minutes the internet was ablaze with speculation about Aden’s links with not only Dibaba but Taoufik Makhloufi, Abubaker Kaki, Abdi Bile and Mo Farah.
Aden himself was a 3:56 miler and helped guide Bile to the world 1500m title in Rome in 1987 plus a win over Seb Coe in the 1989 World Cup.
Bile’s victories effectively ended the period of British dominance of men’s middledistance running in the 1980s, but Aden has been behind even more staggering performances recently with Dibaba’s destruction of the world 1500m record last year.