Go hard or go home; the five words that amount to the mantra by which Mo Farah claims to live his life. It’s his slogan, his philosophy. At least it was until Sunday. On Sunday things got hard, and Farah went home.

Future lectures in crisis management might just reference Farah and British Athletics and their handling, so far, of the Alberto Salazar controversy.

The last few days have been astonishing, after all. One of those episodes in sport when you almost feel the need to watch events unfold through your fingers. An exercise in how to compound an already difficult situation by making one bad call after another.

Mo Farah came out in defence of his coach, but he and his advisers have handled the situation badly

Fans hoping to see Farah in action at the Diamond League meeting were left disappointed on Sunday

Farah withdrew from the 1500m at Sunday's Diamond League meeting, when he should have taken part

Niels De Vos, Chief Executive of UK Athletics, has done his organisation no favours with his lack of leadership

Farah’s first mistake was to insist he was standing by Salazar when he appeared before the media in Birmingham on Saturday afternoon and to defend his position by issuing what sounded like a rather empty threat to ditch his coach if the American could not prove to him that these serious doping allegations made on BBC Panorama are unfounded.

Clean athletes cannot afford to be associated with a doping scandal however strong the bond might be between a coach and an athlete.

Seven witnesses from within the Salazar-run Nike Oregon Project have reportedly gone to the United States Anti-Doping Agency to complain about coaching practices. Farah needs to step away, if only until any investigation has been concluded.

But Farah succeeded only in making matters worse when he then pulled out of the 1500m at the Diamond League meeting on Sunday afternoon, opting instead to jump on a plane back to Portland. He needed to run three and three-quarter laps of a track; not towards the fire.

Coach Alberto Salazar, pictured with Farah (right) and US athlete Galen Rupp at the London 2012 Games has been at the centre of doping allegations this week following revelations in a BBC documentary

Briton Farah finished ahead of Rupp in the 10,000m final at the London 2012 Games

MO WON'T GO HUNGRY... He may have walked away from collecting between £50,000 and £100,000 for racing in Birmingham, but Mo Farah is far from being out of pocket. The double Olympic champion, who is sponsored by sportswear brand Nike and communications giant Virgin Media, is estimated to take home around £2.5million a year in endorsement earnings. The 32-year-old also stars in TV adverts for Quorn Foods. And in 2013, it was reported that Farah would net £250,000 for running just half of that year’s London Marathon. Advertisement

Seasoned Farah observers were not entirely surprised. The double Olympic champion is an emotional individual, prone to the occasional tantrum, and he ignored pleas from British Athletics officials late on Saturday night to stay in Birmingham and compete.

He was gone by 6am the following morning, presumably with the intention of getting the answers he insists he needs.

A statement said he was ‘emotionally and physically drained’, and in person the previous afternoon he said that he was angry that his reputation was suffering because of allegations directed not at him but at his coach and his training partner, Galen Rupp. Both men deny the allegations but, as Farah complained, ‘it’s all Mo, Mo, Mo’.

It was all Mo, Mo, Mo again on Sunday because he did a runner, leaving paying spectators at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium as disappointed as the meeting promoters were embarrassed.

And sympathy for Farah was hard to find. Not even among those supposedly close to the Farah/Salazar camp.

‘He should have been here today,’ said Steve Cram. ‘He could have moved the story on and got back to the athletics. We wouldn’t have minded even if he’d come and got beat today.’

Paula Radcliffe echoed the sentiment but clearly nobody Farah actually listens to either told him he was making a mistake or managed to stop him.

The likes of Paula Radcliffe (left) and Steve Cram have told Farah he should have raced, but he ran away

Farah has received poor advice, or failed to take the good advice he has been given, in flying to the US

Part of the problem, you have to conclude, is the quality of the advice he actually gets.

His agent has been conspicuous by his absence these past few days, failing to respond to messages from journalists when it might have been prudent to have some kind of dialogue. Unusually for him, he was not visible in Birmingham either.

Add to that the fact that Farah’s wife, Tania, has long handled his PR – when situations like this demand a cool head rather than someone whose judgement is no doubt clouded by the emotional attachment of being married to the guy – and one can see how mistakes are made.

As already mentioned, officials at British Athletics did at least try to make him see sense.

But these will be the same officials who had already failed in their duty of providing the correct guidance when they too chose to stand by Salazar on Saturday.

No matter that there are worrying echoes of the Lance Armstrong affair. They have spoken to Salazar and he assures them that he will provide the evidence that enables them to continue working with him on a consultancy basis.

You really couldn’t make it up. You couldn’t make up the fact that both Farah and Neil Black, the performance director of British Athletics, tried to argue that Salazar was not Mary Slaney’s coach when she failed a drugs test 19 years ago.

Farah said he has sought assurances from Salazar that he has not been involved in doping

There is a mountain of evidence to suggest otherwise, but deny it they nevertheless did.

Black said they do their due diligence before allowing an athlete to work with a coach. That would be the same Neil Black who earlier this year regarded Richard Kilty’s return to the Linford Christie stable of sprinters as a ‘sensible decision’.

Without a hint of irony Kilty suggested this week that British Athletics should distance itself from Salazar. Despite being coached by a convicted drug cheat himself.

Equally remarkable was the fact that Farah and British Athletics officials tried to suggest that they have only had the last few days to consider these allegations, when the truth is they have known for some time that BBC reporters have been working on this story.

In such times of crisis, strong leadership is required. But on the BBC Sunday night Niels De Vos, the chief executive of British Athletics, said they had not severed ties with Salazar because Black still had every confidence in the American and his methods.

He also said the ‘review’ of Farah’s training camp, launched in the wake of the allegations, was not an investigation but ‘an audit of Neil’s confidence in Alberto’. Whatever that means.

Nothing like being a bit objective fellas and establishing if there might be something in the claims of seven former members of the Nike Oregon Project.