threefourtyfour wrote:
Mukhtar Muhammad was always a very talented Junior who before going away to Qatar and training with Aden, had a pb of 1.53 at 16 which is about normal for a talented runner.
In 2009 he regressed slightly with a SB of 1.57.
Then a year later he was back in the UK running 1.47 and winning races against top british 800 runners. He finished the season on 1.46.8. I remember a lot of people talking about how dodgy this improvement was but the 'elite' - paula and the bbc were happy to welcome him in with open arms when he came third at the european indoor championships, even having him in the studio.
To me, he is an obvious drugs cheat.
I think Muhktar was playing professional football (presumably at junior or reserve level) during the years you mention he ran 1.55-7 for one of the Sheffield teams.
Almost certainly it's Muhktar who will have been with Jama here - he is always with Jama - he's in every photo and it is well known that Jama is his long term coach (although UK Athletics said that he had to officially name his brother as his coach whilst he was on UKA funding the previous few years)
So is Muhktar implicated in this? It seems likely. But his improvement from 153 to 147 may also have been to do with actually starting athletics full time rather than being a footballer who runs a bit as well.
Amusingly Mukhtar's poor performances in the last few years do highlight Magness's ignorance in his twitter posts about 'if every single performance from a coach is fantastic then that is a red flag...' or something to that effect.
It's easy for every performance to be fantastic if you simply ignore all the less than fantastic ones!