Mo Farah finished first in the 10,000m at the European championships last summer with Andy Vernon coming home second. Photograph: Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images

Mo Farah has accused his team-mate Andy Vernon of not regarding him as British, following their row on Twitter this week. Farah claimed that the bad blood between the pair has festered since last year’s European Championships, following a comment Vernon made when the pair were celebrating after finishing first and second respectively in the 10,000m.

“We were sitting down together with a number of staff and athletes,” said Farah, who moved from Somalia to Britain when he was nine. “One comment he made, which I didn’t really like, was to say that he should have won the gold. I was like: ‘What, the gold should have been given to you?’ And I was like: ‘Because he was the only European guy?’

“You can’t say something like that. I was just kind of biting my tongue at the time.”

But Vernon, while admitting a conversation between the pair had taken place in Zurich, said that Farah had made an “outrageous misrepresentation of the chat” they had – and that he was sorry for any offence caused.

“What I did say was complete tongue-in-cheek,” said Vernon. “I said: ‘I’m European champion.’ That was it. I don’t discard him as British – it’s complete lies. His management team have been very snide at making me out to be a bad guy. He laughed at the time. If he did take it out of context, it wasn’t meant that way and I apologise.”

“I’ve known Mo for 12 years. We weren’t best of friends but we were pals. I was delighted when we finished first and second in the 10,000m and I celebrated with him. There’s nothing more I would like right now than a two-way press conference when we can discus what happened because what he said is not what I said. He has played the cheap shot. He has played the card. I don’t know what I can do.”

Vernon also claimed that Farah’s tweets on Tuesday night to him had been sent by a third party, adding: “I don’t think he is that kind of person. His Twitter account is managed by someone else, that’s common knowledge.”

Meanwhile Farah has admitted that his tweets, during which he branded his rival “an embarrassment” who had not won anything “decent”, should not have been sent. “I do apologise,” he said. “I shouldn’t have reacted that way. We do have some history in the past, me and Andy. In terms of making it public, that was never the right thing to do. My frustration just got the better of me.

“But with an athlete like him, one I’ve been on the podium with, it was difficult to bite my tongue,” he said. “I couldn’t do it. Andy has a history of disrespecting athletes. You know, me and Andy, we’re not best friends, we’ll never be best friends. That’s just how it is. I just have to concentrate on my running and do what I have to do.”

Vernon, who had riled Farah by suggesting the field for his two-mile race at the Sainbury’s Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix this Saturday was a “joke”, has form when it comes to upsetting British athletes on Twitter. Last summer he apologised to Lynsey Sharp, who called him “Andy Vermin” after he claimed she kept going on about winning 800m silver in the Commonwealth Games.

Ironically Farah, who hopes to go close to Kenenisa Bekele’s indoor two-mile world record of 8:04.34, admitted that Vernon had a point about him facing weakened fields in the past.

“Definitely, in the past Ian Stewart [former UK Athletics promoter] helped me in terms of not burning all your energy, because when you are going into a major championship where you need to race to a certain strength. We have done that in the past.

“But two weeks ago, before a few athletes dropped out, this race in Birmingham was loaded. It had guys like Edwin Soi [who beat Farah in 2013] and I was in Ethiopia expecting to have a hard race.”

Source: The Guardian