NY Times (or Ritz) spreads lies in Boulder elite running article

I'd like to add...

1. There may be a few American distance runners who are dirty, although the number is far fewer than foreign athletes/distance runners. Also using quotes from someone with reputations as dubious as Dieter Hogan and Uta Pippig isn't very convincing either.

2. Dieter Hogan has always been clannish and a lot of that has to do with him. He protected Uta like a dog guarding it's last bowl of food and never let her out in Boulder by herself.

3. You may not be in the area but Boulder has become more clannish. It used to be a MUCH friendlier, more open, communal place.

4. A key point you did miss. The main reasons foreigners train in the US (and Boulder in particular) is it is cheaper to get to lucrative road races (most of them are in the US) and Boulder is a fabulous training ground.

And try not to be such a negative dick to the person who wrote the article. Encourage her to write more about running in a positive way rather than discouraging her with your condescension so she decides (quickly) to pass on her next running-related assignment to another newbie who will make the same mistakes or worse.

here is the article, picture of the Kimbia guys training up top.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/sports/othersports/31boulder.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

October 31, 2006

In Boulder, Runners Gather in Guarded Isolation

By LIZ ROBBINS

BOULDER, Colo. — Here at 5,430 feet, all roads lead to a finish line somewhere. They just rarely converge.

As the major marathon season hit its fall peak, professional distance runners from Kenya, Japan, Romania and Tanzania, as well as the United States, were pounding the dirt roads in Boulder for a high-altitude boost.

Long a popular haven for elite athletes, the area boasts 300 sunny days a year, 400 miles of trails (including Magnolia, which soars to 8,600 feet), more massage therapists than muscles and a fervent outdoor culture.

But this is no running utopia. Instead, Boulder is an example of the fiercely competitive sport of road racing, in which runners train in quiet isolation, passing one another occasionally on hills while guarding their strategies.

Competitors from around the world may come here, yet the various camps operate in their own universes. With schedules dictated by agents, runners compete not just for the podium, but for a relatively small pool of resources, shoe contracts and race appearance fees. It is a scene that is more clannish than collegial.

Consider one typical brisk Boulder morning in early October. Dathan Ritzenhein, 23, the United States’ latest prospect, prepared for his marathoning debut in the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5 by repeating 10 hill sprints. Alan Culpepper, 34, a fellow 2004 Olympian and University of Colorado alumnus, was running a suburb away.

“The marathon will be the first time I’ve raced Alan since my senior year in high school,” Ritzenhein said Oct. 9. “We live that close and we’re in the same sport, but our paths don’t cross. It’s kind of strange.”

Elsewhere, Japanese women peeled off matching cinnamon warm-ups and embarked on runs from the Boulder Reservoir. One of the women wordlessly passed a group of Kenyans on a 25-kilometer training run.

The Kenyans’ German coach, Dieter Hogen, barked encouragement, and the former marathon champion Uta Pippig echoed it, shouting, “Keep a good rhythm, guys!”

Hogen had once led Pippig out of East Germany and eventually to Boulder, coaching her to multiple marathon titles in the 1990s. She was barred for two years for failing a 1998 drug test that was later ruled inconclusive, and now she helps runners in Boston and Boulder.

Hogen runs Camp KIMbia, in operation since 2003. It may raise eyebrows for its isolation, but a few miles away Anuta Catuna of Romania was showing off her new house and pointing to one across the road that belonged to the 2000 Olympic women’s champion, Naoko Takahashi. Catuna, the bubbly 1996 New York champion who is trying to become a United States citizen for the 2008 Olympic trials, trains and socializes with other Romanian runners living in Boulder.

To old-timers, segregation is an unfortunate development. “I think all these guys are doing a disservice to each other,” said the South African marathoner Mark Plaatjes, who owns the Boulder Running Company, a small chain of shoe stores, and a physical therapy business. “They are missing out on the collective knowledge, the experiences.”

Frank Shorter, the American marathoner who popularized the sport by winning the gold medal in the 1972 Olympics and the silver in 1976, was the first to settle in Boulder.

“It was the only city with an indoor track at 5,000 feet,” he said in a telephone interview. “There were 10 committed runners in town, but I was the only real athlete training.”

Shorter set the pace. In 1987, Plaatjes came to raise his children without apartheid and to run with other champions: Steve Jones of Wales, Rob De Castella of Australia, Arturo Barrios of Mexico and Priscilla Welch of England.

“We used to meet at each other’s houses; there would be 30 guys and 20 countries represented,” Plaatjes said outside his store. “We’d go out for a run, beat each other up and then drink a beer afterwards.”

Collegiality now thrives in Boulder during the afternoon when the Africans drink chai together. Teamwork is paramount in daily chores or on the course, whether they train to set the pace or to win.

“It is very good to be in a group, because in training you need to simulate running,” said Thomas Nyariki, wearing sunglasses during an interview to protect his right eye, which was blinded in a 2003 carjacking in Kenya. He will race New York, having won the city’s half-marathon in August.

Hogen runs his camp with wry humor and unwavering discipline, coordinating runners’ workouts according to their marathons: Chicago, New York, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Dallas.

The runners leave their families behind and immerse themselves with Hogen, “because of his experience; he knows how to train hard,” Nyariki said, adding, “We go two weeks hard, one week easy.”

Hogen founded the KIMbia (“to run” in Swahili) management company with Tom Ratcliffe, an agent based in Boston.

“These guys all have real good backgrounds,” Hogen said, explaining that he chooses runners who were not necessarily famous but had success at shorter distances. “They come with the thing you want to see — a commitment to working hard.”

This year at Hogen’s camp, as many as 18 men and 2 women from Kenya and Tanzania have shared four apartments, which include facilities for physical therapy and laundry and, in one concrete backyard, a hot tub that overlooks an office park.

The athletes usually train twice a day. In the afternoon, they make their sugary milk tea in a spaghetti pot, watch television and play checkers in a living room decorated with prize plaques. At night, they cook ugali, a Kenyan stew poured over a cornmeal mixture.

Hogen said the camp had no secrets, and pointed out that it was featured on a Web site by a freelance writer (chasingkimbia.com). But the camp raises questions among some in Boulder because of Hogen’s connection with Pippig.

“The case was dismissed; they couldn’t prove anything, and that was the end of the story,” Pippig said, referring to her 1998 drug test. “And believe me — I couldn’t work with anyone if I did it.”

She added of the Kenyans, “For these guys, drugs play no role.”

Shorter, the former chairman of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said Hogen’s camp raised a general concern that foreign athletes went to Boulder to dodge testing.

“My only question would be: How often are the Kenyans training in Boulder tested?” Shorter said, urging marathon directors to control prerace testing. “You have to set up a system so you don’t have to be suspicious.”

Ratcliffe said his athletes were clean. They register their whereabouts with the International Association of Athletics Federations and can be subject to random testing by USADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“I would love for them to come every day,” Ratcliffe said. “People see East German intrigue, but it’s just not the case.”

Ritzenhein said that distance running was not “that dirty of a sport,” and that no American distance runners used drugs. He said that he spoke of the topic daily with his Boulder teammates, the twins Jorge and Ed Torres (the three helped Colorado win the N.C.A.A. cross-country championship in 2001) and Jason Hartmann, a high school teammate from Rockford, Mich.

This year, the New York Road Runners donated $240,000 to support running camps in the United States, including $115,000 to one in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where the Olympic medalists Meb Keflezighi and Deena Kastor train. Ritzenhein’s coach, Brad Hudson, a former distance runner at Oregon, received $45,000 for his Boulder Performance Training Group.

On training runs, Hudson follows Ritzenhein in a tan 1983 Volvo he bought last summer. Hudson does not accept money from Ritzenhein, he said, to eliminate conflicts of interest with sponsors.

But the allocation, filtered through USA Track and Field, caused some resentment. Steve Jones coaches a young group in Boulder that was not financed. He said he was frustrated because Ritzenhein already received sponsorship from Nike.

“I believe we need to work within reality,” Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of the Road Runners said in a telephone interview in late October. “We are best served in funding kids coming out of college who have the best shot of winning gold medals. We’re beyond being just the best American now.”

America’s past looms in bronze at the base of Colorado’s Folsom Stadium. Every May, nearly 50,000 runners from around the world pass by a statue of Shorter on their way to the finish of the 10-kilometer Bolder Boulder. Shorter was a co-founder of the race in 1979, and it defined the city as an outdoor Mecca.

Alpinists, triathletes and mountain bikers train here, though perhaps not to the extremes of the running cult Divine Madness, whose members pool their earnings, live ascetically and run ultra races. “We’re not all like that,” Culpepper said.

Children seem to have inherited the running genes; Boulder High School’s cross-country team fielded 135 boys and girls for the second consecutive year.

Stickers convey Boulder’s maximum heart rate: “Don’t Die Wondering” and “Remember to Breathe.” The Go Fast energy drink truck rumbles through downtown.

Running utopia is not yet here. Mark Wetmore, the coach of the nationally ranked Colorado cross-country teams, limited the stadium’s public track hours to preserve its surface four years ago. With no central meeting place, elite runners do track work at different high schools. This makes Plaatjes dream.

“I want to buy a plot of land and build a clubhouse and have a training room, with trails out back,” he said. “A facility where there is a bar and a sitting area, like in Europe.

“I know this sounds corny,” he added, “but I really think, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ ”

But will they come at the same time?

\"1. There may be a few American distance runners who are dirty, although the number is far fewer than foreign athletes/distance runners. Also using quotes from someone with reputations as dubious as Dieter Hogan and Uta Pippig isn\'t very convincing either.\"

In this case both you and ritzenhien have absolutly no evidence to back up your case.

Mainly you hope this is true.

history lesson wrote:

1. There may be a few American distance runners who are dirty, although the number is far fewer than foreign athletes/distance runners.

You'd be surprised.

history lesson wrote:

And try not to be such a negative dick to the person who wrote the article. Encourage her to write more about running in a positive way rather than discouraging her with your condescension so she decides (quickly) to pass on her next running-related assignment to another newbie who will make the same mistakes or worse.

I have to agree with this sentiment. I read the article this morning and found it to be quite good. It had a nice balance of a lot of the issues someone not deeply in the sport wouldn't know anything about. So, yes, the original poster is a negative dick.

history lesson wrote:There may be a few American distance runners who are dirty, although the number is far fewer than foreign athletes/distance runners.

It always amuses me when someone makes sweeping generalizations like this out of some sort of patriotic sense that "we're obviously better than them."

There are honest people and dishonest people. Period. Not dirty cheating commies (or whatever) and honest, hard working Americans, no matter how hard we'd like to believe that.

I defy you to prove that Americans (or Canadians, or Swedes or whatever) are any less prone to cheat than a German (regardless of past political influence), French, Chinese etc athlete.

There's simply no way to prove your thesis one way or the other. It's admirable that you feel that way, but I think it's probably a little naive.

OED wrote:

You'd be surprised.

Do you have some inside information or what? Out with it

I agree with Pete. We have no problem thinking that our sprinters are often drugged, but we have a hard time believing that any of our distance runners would be using EPO? Money and fame can cause many people to do things that they wouldn't normally consider, regardless of nationality.

BTW, I thought it was a good article.

Pete, while I agree with your general sentiments, YOU ARE ALSO making sweeping generalizations yourself such as:

* all nations cheat equally

* there is absolutely no proof against the above not being true

While it is definitely true that many US athletes cheat, the evidence so far suggests there is a much higher % of sprinters than distance runners cheating.

When totalitarian nations of that past such as East Germany, Soviet Union, and China(it is changing somewhat now), have had national sports PROGRAMS run by their totalitarian gov'ts, and those progams utilize PED's, obvioulsy it is much more likely that an indivdual from that nation will be cheating than an individual from a Democratic country without a national program and with 100's of elite training groups run by different people. Some of those programs will use drugs, some will not.

Certainly no one should suggest that there are no US distance runners are cheating, because it is very likely that there are some who are cheating.

But to say that all nations participating in a particular sport (say, distance running) use the same amount of PED's as all other nations is equally naive and overgeneralized. OF course some evidence must be offered once one points the finger at a particular nation, rather than basing that accusation on just patriotism or jealousy (for instance, when people state that most East Africans must be on drugs because.........because..........they have been destroying US runners consistently and thoroughly for almost 20 years. One needs to offer better logic/evidence than THAT).

I am quite well acquainted with most of America's top distance runners. Based on my years of observation and interaction, a greater percentage of Americans are clean than, i.e., the Dr. Gabriel Rosa affiliated Kenyans or Jos Hermanns related Ethiopians (both of those snakes are well known for dodging IAAF testing agencies), and now the Dieter-Uta connection with these Kenyans might be called into question by some. This doesn't even get into the Jos Hermanns ties to China and Eastern European bloc/Russians. I am also aware of some possible (swept under the rug) indiscretions by the Spaniards. But the bulk of lng distance running Americans are clean unless you don't agree with altitude tents used by the Gouchers, Matt Tegenkamp, and so on. As for the US sprinters, the proof is in the slew of positive tests and weak denials.

We do a disservice to the sport when we randomly throw out accusations.

My question is - What does it take to quell the inuendos?

The Dieter-Uta connection? Sounds like some sinister group we better look out for. You'd think they'd want to keep a low profile. Instead they allow 24-hour access of their athletes to chasingKIMbia.com Not the smartest thing if they have something suspicious going on.

[quote]swoosher wrote:

We have no problem thinking that our sprinters are often drugged, but we have a hard time believing that any of our distance runners would be using EPO? Money and fame can cause many people to do things that they wouldn't normally consider, regardless of nationality.

[quote]

This applies to our home-grown, white-skinned, distance runners as well. Drugs are a problem in all parts of the elite level even among the "slow" elites. By "problem" I'm not insuating that any one athlete is using PEDs. What I mean is that the pressure to use, and availablity of PEDs, is there for any athlete who cashes a check from a sponsor. And, as we all know, you don't have to be a gold medalist to be sponsored.

I don't understand what Robbins was hoping to get out of her article. She writes, "But this is no running utopia. Instead, Boulder is an example of the fiercely competitive sport of road racing, in which runners train in quiet isolation, passing one another occasionally on hills while guarding their strategies."

...maybe that is utopia to those trying to make a living at the sport. I am surprised this article came out now. Isn't the NY Marathon press push about making the sport more "professional"? Robbins should know better, she writes for the sports pages and writes a lot on tennis and basketball. Those athletes don't all share strategies. Is her idea and Mark Plaatjes idea of a better running place, a place where everyone trains on the same track, at the same time, sharing strategies....? Does anyone think this would work? If Plaatjes builds the track, will they come? Or how about SHOULD they come?

Who are the American distance runners who have been busted?

Eddy- probably cheating long before he changed citizenship

Deeja- probably just misguided under Eddy's "program"

Others????

Let's talk about CONVICTED cheaters only, please.

Don't forget Reggie Jacobs. He was a bad man.

Sir Lance-alot wrote:Pete, YOU ARE ALSO making sweeping generalizations yourself such as:

* all nations cheat equally

* there is absolutely no proof against the above not being true

Lance,

I realized when I wrote my post that I had to generalize to make my point.

I will concede that certain cultures are, in my experience, more prone to engage in cheating, corruption and the like than others.

The thing is, I tend to not believe about 90% of what I believe, and rather hold things in a state of blissful indifference until such time as I can convince myself of the veracity. To me, hearing the same thing over and over doesn't make it more true, so I tend not to swallow some of the party line I read on here, since nobody has delivered the punch line.

As an example, nobody has provided complelling (to me) proof that Cierpinski cheated Shorter out of gold in Montreal. I realize I'm sticking my neck out on this one. Everyone assumes it to be true. After all, the East Germans apparently had a formal doping system (I'm not denying this) and Shorter saw documents with coded entries that tell him Cierpinski was dirty.

Now be careful in how you interpret what I just wrote. I'm not denying that Cierpinski was dirty, I'm just telling you I'm not convinced, which isn't the same thing 9at least in my mind).

So, back to the main point. I concede that not all nations have the same ethical standards. However, I also do not accept that Americans, on the whole (or Canadians, Dutch, whatever) maintain higher than average standards. Again, you can make fun of my opinion all you like, but until proven otherwise, I don't believe that a Chinese person or a Russian person is any more likely to be dishonourable than and American.

Hence, I believe there are likely just as many American cheaters (and by extension clean athletes) per capita in the US as there are in, say, Kenya or Morocco. And I'll believe that until I decide there's a reason to believe differently.

I'm not trying to convince anyone else to share my opinion, I'm just telling you what my opinion is on the question.

Pete wrote:I tend to not believe about 90% of what I READ, ...

Dr Rosa has never had an athlete test positive. Not one of Rosa's athletes has ever been suspected.

Hermans has never had an athlete test positive. There is no credible evidence that any of his athletes were dirty

Uta was cleared. Dieter has never had an athlete test positive.

What ties? No Hermans' athletes have ever tested positive.

Don't believe what you read on bathroom stalls.

[quote]Mork wrote:

Dr Rosa has never had an athlete test positive. Not one of Rosa's athletes has ever been suspected. [quote]

Are you saying runners or all athletes? I have a close friend that tells a different story from back in the day when Dr. Rosa worked with cyclists.