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Jeremy R wrote:
I'm a Rupp fan. I enjoy watching him race. As for the cloud surrounding NOP and Salazar, until something actually comes out of it, I'm ok with what they do, gray areas are fine to me. He said/She said allegations are not enough for me at this point to be convinced any actual rules were broken. At that level you're looking for every edge, and you see that in every sport.
The Rupp hatred is a media creation that goes back long before NOP. Rupp came on the scene in 2002, after winning the Oregon state XC title as a sophomore. The following year he finished 2nd at Footlocker and ran some impressive track times and people began to focus on his private coaching from Alberto, which some people felt gave him an unfair advantage. The truth is, Rupp was still doing most of his training with his high school and there wasn't anything fancy about the extra work he was getting from Alberto. Rupp was mostly just getting in more volume, which is what you always see with an athlete expecting to compete for national titles. Rupp got even better his senior year and became one of America's greatest high school distance runners with Alberto right by his side. I think Rupp broke the H.S. 5K record in Europe, which some people saw as a special arrangement not typically afforded to U.S. H.S. athletes. This is kind of where the bashing began on Letsrun. Most of it was not personal, to me, it was mostly born out of jealousy. At this point, AlSal was already on the record for not being a Letsrun fan. A few years later a personal issue developed between Alberto and the Johnson brothers, that issue got extended to Rupp, NOP and even Oregon to a lesser extent and Johnson brothers grew it to what we know today. In spite of having an incredible NCAA career and immediate success as a pro and basically doing everything right when it comes to running, LRC posters were criticizing Rupp's guarded responses to questions and even the way he looked. It got really personal, there were discussions about Rupp's family finances, religious convictions, sexuality. Eventually, Letsrun became off limits to NOP and the all-out assault began. In most cases, the Johnson brothers did not launch direct attacks but helped promote and move along the Rupp/AlSal/NOP bashing. Obviously, the NOP doping scandal just gave the Johnson brothers the ammunition they needed for an all-out attack against, Rupp, AlSal, and NOP. Yes, Letsrun is the impetus for what we see today as the attitude towards Rupp. It's kind of like what happened with Justin Gatlin, no matter what you do on the track, the media can create the version of you they want if you fall on their bad side.