Mo Farah photographed with doper Hamza Driouch

A recent photo that looks like Mo Farah running with doper Hamza Driouch has some speculating whether the Olympic champion has been training with the banned athlete. The picture was published on Jan. 20.

Driouch, the former world junior 1,500m champion was banned for two years for irregularities on his passport. That kicked in on Dec. 31, 2014. Part of the IAAF restriction is that banned athletes cannot formally train. The IAAF does look into any potential breeches of this policy.

But Farah’s agent, Ricky Simms, denies that Farah was running with Driouch. He says Farah was training alone during his seven-week period in Ethiopia. He went to Ethiopia by himself and was not part of any group of athletes even if they may have been on the track training at the same time.

“Mo was in Ethiopia by himself,” said Simms in an interview with The Telegraph. “He hired some local athletes to pace for him during his workouts and he wasn’t part of any other training group,” he says adding that it’s not out of the norm for others to jump in.

Farah started his year Ethiopia before returning to set the indoor two-mile record in Birmingham last week. Based out of Portland, Oregon, he said that’s it’s too cold to train at home and that getting in a good block of training over winter has to be done somewhere else.

There is no suggestion that Farah has been involved in doping.