ON Sunday morning, Sir Mo Farah created sporting history when he became the first person to claim four Great North Run titles in a row. A few hours later, Chris Froome followed him into the record books as he became the first British cyclist to win both the Vuelta a Espana and Tour de France in the same year.

Two sporting superstars; two quite staggering achievements. Yet the response to both has been relatively muted. In an era when the phrase ‘sporting greatness’ is bandied around with ever-increasing abandon, it is a crying shame that two of Britain’s true all-time greats find themselves subjected to a whispering campaign that seeks to diminish the extent of their brilliance.

There are multiple reasons behind the reluctance to laud Farah and Froome with the same exuberance reserved for some of their sporting contemporaries who have achieved far less. To some, they are simply not ‘British’ enough. Froome was born in Kenya, schooled in South Africa and now lives in Monaco. Farah was born in Somalia, and emigrated to the United States before his career took off. They both chose to represent Britain though, and in an increasingly globalised world, it is nonsensical to claim sportspeople have to be born in a certain country to feel an emotional attachment to it.

Froome seems to suffer because he is not Sir Bradley Wiggins, and doesn’t possess his fellow Tour de France winner’s natural exuberance or fondness for self-promotion. Farah has also been criticised in the past for being too aloof and self-absorbed. Their public profile has not kept pace with their achievements, but ultimately it is impossible to get away from the fact that their standing has primarily been diminished by one thing and thing alone. Drugs. To many, Farah and Froome’s achievements come with a giant asterisk attached.

Neither Farah nor Froome has ever failed a drugs test. Thanks to their relentless success over the last decade or so, they are two of the most tested competitors in sport, yet they have consistently produced negative results.

Some will claim, ‘So what’. Lance Armstrong passed a succession of tests before he was finally exposed as a drugs cheat, and as the recent expose into state-sponsored Russian drug taking proves, there are still plenty of ways to circumvent the system.

Sadly, Farah and Froome both find themselves competing in sports that have been dreadfully compromised by historic drug taking. The misbehaviour of others continues to cast a long shadow, and whenever anyone achieves anything out of ordinary in either athletics or cycling, the questioning immediately begins.

The questions, however, are impossible to answer. You can prove someone is guilty of drug taking, but you can never conclusively prove they are innocent. So while Farah and Froome continue to pass every test they are presented with, that will never be sufficient to satisfy their most suspicious interrogators.

To make things even murkier when it comes to last weekend’s winners, there are special circumstances pertaining to both that make them ‘guilty by association’ in the eyes of some sport fans. While Farah and Froome have not been directly implicated in drug investigations, some of those working around them have.

Farah’s reputation has been tarnished by his association with his coach, Alberto Salazar, whose Nike Oregon Project has been the subject of an inquiry by the US Anti-Doping Agency since 2015. A BBC Panorama investigation in 2015 accused Salazar of encouraging athletes in his care of taking banned substances, but stopped short of directly linking Farah with any wrongdoing.

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The mud has stuck though, and Farah’s persistent refusal to publicly distance himself from Salazar has been interpreted in some quarters as an admission of guilt.

That seems extremely unfair, given that USADA’s investigation has not yet resulted in any charges or punishments and that Salazar continues to operate in the United States as an accredited coach. Farah insists he was not aware of Salazar’s alleged use of testosterone medication back in 2011, and is adamant that if it did take place, he was not involved.

Do we take him at face value? Some won’t, citing his relationship with another controversial coach, Jama Aden, as evidence of a pattern of involvement with discredited figures. Yet just because Farah has come into contact with people who are either under suspicion or guilty of previous offences, it does not automatically follow that he is a drugs cheat. If that was the threshold for establishing guilt, pretty much every athlete competing today would be ineligible.

The story with Froome bears strong similarities. As the figurehead of Team Sky, the four-time Tour de France winner finds himself implicated in the multiple accusations that have been levelled at Sir Dave Brailsford and his team in the last few years.

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There was the curious case of a mystery medical package couriered to the Team Sky bus on the night of the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine. After a fortnight of uncertainty, Team Sky eventually claimed the package contained the legal decongestant Fluimucil. Judging by the response of a Parliamentary investigation into the incident, plenty remain unconvinced.

Then there were also the Fancy Bears hacking revelations that revealed the extent of Wiggins’ use of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs). Froome actually put his head above the parapet to criticise TUEs and described the system as “open to abuse”, but he still finds himself lumped into the same catch-all assumption that the whole of Team Sky are cutting whatever corners they can. For the record, Froome freely admits from benefiting from TUEs during the Criterium du Dauphine in 2013 and Tour of Romandie in 2014, but turned down the option of a medical exemption during his 2015 Tour de France win on “moral grounds”.

That is insufficient to satisfy his critics though, who cite his rapid rise from the role of Team Sky domestique in 2011 as ‘proof’ that he must be cheating. There is an alternative explanation of course. Perhaps, when he was approaching the prime of his career, the 31-year-old simply improved?

In the past, hard work and commitment, allied to natural talent, was sufficient explanation for sporting success. Now, the spectre of drug taking means an alternative narrative is impossible to ignore.

That makes us all poorer, as it demolishes the fundamental reasons why we watch and love sport. But it is especially damaging to the likes of Farah and Froome, who find themselves fighting a battle for legitimacy they can never win.