This morning, our editor had this up as QOD.
The QOD was:
"[Genzebe Dibaba's] association with a certain coach is not particularly healthy for the sport. ... We saw [Sifan] Hassan at the stairs, she was lovely, it was all great. I don't think she was expressing disappointment [on the podium]. I think she was expressing her contempt for the gold medallist and her associations."
- Laura Muir's coach Andy Young, talking about why he thinks Sifan Hassan refused to smile when receiving her 1500m bronze medal on the podium at World Indoors.
Can someone help me understand the logic behind that quote?
1. Both Aden and Salazar have been investigated by the anti-doping authorities.
2. Both have had former team member raise suspicions (except in Salazar's case it was lots of ex team members in Aden's case it's just one (Torrence)).
3. Performance enhancing drugs have been known to travel in close proximity to both of them (except in Aden's case it was in another athlete's room when he had like 20 athletes around him, in Salazar's case it was in his own bag).
4. Despite lengthy anti-doping investigation into both of them, neither has been charged
Can someone tell me the logic of why Hassan/Salazar are given the free pass and Aden/Dibaba are being smeared? I just don't understand it.
I'm not saying both are dirty or both are clean. I've actually encountered this type of thinking myself in private interactions with people. Whenever someone says to me, "Oh Aden's athletes, they makes me sick." I always say to them, "So I presume you think the same about the NOP?" Many times they say no and I really try to pick apart the logic of it all.
I'm not sure what it stems from. I think there is a huge propensity to think favorably of people from your own country (and most of the people I talk to are from the US and presumably Young talks to a ton of people in the UK who are big Mo Farah fans) and it's easy to denigrate someone from Africa who doesn't show up in the Western media much.
Along those lines, Paul Gains sent us an email yesterday reminding me that Jama Aden denied everything to him last year. Here is Gains story on Aden from last year.
https://runningmagazine.ca/exclusive-interview-jama-aden/And here is the link from where the quote up top came from.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/43296871