Reider training camp where Okagbare trained is tainted by doping, abuse and ‘drama’ says Times of London 

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 doctor compared 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, tooting 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, 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 with Reider when he persuaded him to join him at the University of Florida in 2008. 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 hammer 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 be associated with it. He knows where I stand on doping.”

Gemili, the 2014 European 200m champion, may have tried to distance himself from Okagbare in our all too brief exchange but Taylor says she was very much part of a group that comprises 20 or more professional athletes, the majority of whom pay Reider tens of thousands of dollars each year to coach them. One source described it as “a very successful business”.

“Blessing joined us after Doha [the 2019 World Championships],” Taylor says. “And someone like her would have trained with the guys for some sessions. The 100m and 200m guys would generally do stuff together; block starts, tempo sessions.

“For me, it was quite frustrating that somebody so close to you — we trained a metre apart — can be doing something you are fighting the most.

“I’m happy that the hammer came down. If you’re not going to do it the right way, don’t be part of the sport. I believe in ‘one and done’ when it comes to doping, and at her age I’d say she’s done.”

Tumbleweed athletes

Adam Gemili (GB, 28) World Championship gold medallist, dropped from UK Athletics’ World Class Programme after staying with Reider’s Tumbleweed Track Club

Laviai Nielsen (GB, 25) World Championship silver medallist. Also removed from the national set-up after refusing to part with Reider

Daryll Neita (GB, 25) Cut ties with Reider after being instructed to do so by UK Athletics

Omar McLeod (Jamaica, 27) Former Olympic and world 110m hurdles champion, left Tumbleweed earlier this month

Andre De Grasse (Canada, 27) Olympic 200m champion, has trained at Tumbleweed since 2018

Christian Taylor (US, 31) Double Olympic triple jump gold medallist and current world champion, called sexual abuse allegations against Reider “disturbing” in 2021

Trayvon Bromell (USA, 26) The sixth-fastest ever over 100m, moved to Tumbleweed in 2019

Blessing Okagbare (Nigeria, 33) Removed from 100m semi-finals at Tokyo Olympics after failed drug test