Christian Hesch doping article in the NY Times/Competitor.com

Let's start a list of people Hesch cheated out of money

St Augestine FL Jan 21st 2012

Emmanuel Bor owed $300

Jared Shoemaker owed $300

Cypress CA July 23 2011

Courtney Williams $500

Mohamed Fabil $250

Sergio Reyes $250

Cypress CA July 28 2012

Jordan Chipangama $250

GNC Live Well Liberty Mile Aug 17, 2012

AJ Acosta $300

Donnie Cowat $175

Cory Leslie $175

Abiyote Endale $50

Dan Clark $25

Liam Boylan-Pett $75

Edmonton Blue Mile May 25, 2012

Peter Corrigan $300

Alastair Brown $200

Saheed Khan $200

Madison Theriault $200

Brad Bickley $100

Face up to it wrote:

LRC facilitates and often refuses to take down slanderous and near slanderous posts on elites and then when called on it make excuses by citing what they do take down.

I think your post shows how hard it is to run a forum.

What the hell is a "near slanderous" post?

Are we supposed to somehow determine the veracity of the truth of every post on LetsRun.com and/or only allow posts that we know to be 100% true?

When people pointed out Hesch's uneven performances in the past, we should have removed the posts because they implied he might be doping without any proof? Or should we have some how determined Hesch was a cheat and leave them up?

Should we not have allowed Lance Armstrong drug discussions? Some people got on us for allowing such filth to be on the forums.

We have a "Report a post" function. We take it seriously. Feel free to post on here or email me all the slanderous posts we "refuse to take down."

We recently received a letter from a lawyer associated with a prominent person in the sport, asking us for the ip addresses of a bunch of posters they claimed were posting slanderous stuff. I wrote back telling them it wasn't our responsibility to determine the veracity of posts but to send me the individual posts they found to be slanderous and I didn't get a response.

Not Amber wrote:

Makes me wonder a lot about Phil Reid, Peter Magill, Sergio Reyes, Nike TEAM LA, Linda Somers, all of those SoCal runners are under some suspicion. It's f**ked up.

It is interesting you say that because I have not seen any of these people racing lately. Just wonder if they are going to retire and...hide. Linda Somers is pretty obvious by her face that she is taking something.

The Elephant Sits wrote:

C'mon wrote:

Running is a dirty sport and always will be....

If that makes you feel better for your shortcomings, then godspeed. The likes of Hesch are the dark exception to our sport. Frauds like him are few and far between. It's tough for some to swallow that there are a lot of intelligent, hard working, talented, and dedicated athletes out there whose performances are "enhanced" solely by these variables.

If you think drug cheats are few and far between in the sport of running you still need to be schooled....Did you hear what Dr Don Catlin said when he went back and tested samples from the 1984 Olympics?? 200 athletes failed when he simply used new testing protocols available to him that were not available back in 84...have you ever seen so many elite runners with exercised induced asthma in your life? If it wasn't for CJ Hunter being a Jilted lover Marion Jones would still be an American hero and Balco would be up and running....everyone would just assume as you say: she was a talented, hard working, and dedicated athlete...The drug cheats are just off to new methods of cheating now...

Face up to it wrote:

This explains so much.

Wejo looks like a Stepford Doofus.

LRC facilitates and often refuses to take down slanderous and near slanderous posts on elites and then when called on it make excuses by citing what they do take down.

The level of character between this Hesch d-bag and the Blojo's is not that different.

Hesch is delusional and turns a blind eye to the full repercussions of his actions.

The Blojo's and their sock puppet, Employee #1, do the online journalistic equivalent of the same.

+1000!

POTD

What is funny is this idiot smuggled the vials across the border when if he just paid an extra $50 for the doctor who works around the corner from the pharmacy to write him the Rx that goes with it you can legally declare it and bring it back to the states. I don't but EPO or anything but have family in Mexico and would buy xanax in Tijuana and would get the Rx and bring it back over the border and they can't do anything as long as its declared. This moron risked serious time in a mexican prison because he was too dumb to figure this out lol.

Wejo - Well, to begin with, Steven writes that Hesch was found out by a teammate who discovered an empty vial in his bag. This is false. This bears no resemblance to the actual incident that led to this whole situation. A friend found a half-dozen full vials of EPO in Hesch's jacket. Hesch took the vials with him and continued to race for months before this situation came to a head. There's a huge difference between getting caught with an empty vial at the tail-end of EPO use, and then confessing to USADA shortly thereafter, and getting caught with multiple vials and continuing to race for months - and then for weeks and weeks after first confessing to EPO usage. And that's just the start.

The article bears almost zero resemblance to the actual progression of incidents as they occurred. Hesch invented an alternate reality, and the writer wrote that reality as if it were fact. For a NY Times piece, Kasica might have interviewed all the people involved - especially the person who'd initially discovered the EPO, and whose name Steven had been given (he also knew about Runner's World's investigation, but showed no interest in determining why Runner's World had spent over a month on the project - or why Hesch had told him that Douglas "rubbed me the wrong way").

He also might learn something from reading the Runner's World piece. For one, he might learn that Hesch confessed to several members of his club in late August, swearing to them that he was self-reporting to USADA. He then sent emails and texts claiming to have self-reported (Douglas requested and received these from members of the club, refusing to simply take anyone's word for what was supposedly written on them). After the first week of September, his club grew suspicious of Hesch's claim to have self-reported (he couldn't produce any evidence of having done so), and they decided to report Hesch themselves. Read Steven's article, however, and we have Christian ready to confront accusations when "Usada officials confronted him by phone in late September." Odd that he felt like fighting accusations that he'd told clubmates he'd confessed weeks earlier.

In fact, Hesch only seems to have entertained thoughts of confessing when Douglas confronted him in a second interview with the texts and emails that contradicted what Hesch had been peddling in the first interview - Hesch's claims that his clubmates were lying about his earlier confession and that the evidence against him was false.

When Douglas proposed a third interview that included Hesch and his accusers, Hesch realized the jig was up. And he ran to a freelance reporter, hoping to sell the fantasy that he was confessing of his own volition - and hoping to defuse release of the serial lying he'd engaged in during his initial dealings with his club and Scott Douglas.

Of course, Steven didn't know about any of this because, unlike Scott Douglas, he didn't do his homework. He listened to Hesch, and then he typed what Hesch said, ignoring the fact that, as a drug cheat, Hesch might not have much affinity for the truth.

I stand by my description of Kasica's piece as incredibly shoddy journalism - you know, because it includes fiction where fact could have been easily ascertained (as it was ascertained by Scott Douglas at Runner's World).

Kasica was nothing but a pawn in Hesch's attempt to escape as much blame (and as much truth about his behavior) as possible. But Kasica should have known better. The fact that he couldn't even manage to accurately describe the inciting incident in this entire situation (couldn't even come close to it) says all you need to know.

As for the poster who claims none of us So Cal people have been racing lately, I ran in the USATF Masters 5K Championships on Saturday, which announced ahead of time that we were subject to drug testing. Thanks for asking.

wejo wrote:

What the hell is a "near slanderous" post?

oh, please, don't try to come off all innocent. you and your brother facilitate and encourage sensationalist claims that may or may not have a shred of validity when it comes to elite runners. It's a joke. Your obvious bias towards certain runners is only highlighted by how hard you rip (and allow denigrating posts) concerning other runners. You and Rojo never miss an opportunity to take a jab at elite runners you, for whatever reason, don't like or respect as much. As I've said numerous times before, you guys are a near abomination to the sport and the antics you encourage on here are absolutely pathetic. I don't know why any elite runner would ever give you the time of day with how quickly and veraciously you seek to denigrate them at each and every opportunity(the interview with Rupp after the American 2 mile and Abdi after Fagan's admission immediately spring to mind).

And that doesn't even begin to breach the subject of the rampant racist and bigoted absurdities that pepper these forums.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

. . . In the big scheme of things, he could live a great, even heroic rest of his life, and be a selfless, wonderful person who helps others, and that would certainly wipe away the stains of what he has done here. ...

Everything Christian has done AFTER being caught suggests that he has no intention of taking "heroic" steps to redeem his life post-doping scandal, from the gamesmanship with his teammates when he misrepresented his conversations with the doping agency, to his denials of doping to the Running Times reporter, to his conniving mind trying to negotiate a ban that might fall under the radar screen and avoid public embarrassment in the running community, to his inevitable realization he was trapped like a rat and about to be outed, and only then, gaming the system again, attempted to mitigate the damage by arranging to out himself through a hapless NY Times reporter, who Christian manipulated with lies and misrepresentations to steer a much more favorable article than would have been possible if the clueless reporter had done even a modicum of due diligence. Bottom line, every step taken by Christian in this disgraceful chain of events has been characterized by cheating, lying, misrepresenting, and otherwise maliciously taking steps to do everything other than accept responsibility until a gun was put to his head and even then he was still in uber-manipulative mode, There is a fundamental lack of character in Christian's persona that got him to the place he now occupies, a lousy cheater and fraud who ripped off himself, his teammates, coaches, and the extended running community. There is zero justification to ever again embrace him in this community. My guess is we will NOT see heroics from Christian in the future that will redeem him, only more of the same lies, frauds, manipulation and misrepresentation. The guy is fatally flawed and sucks. Am I wrong?

vp of Sales wrote:

. . . I don't know why any elite runner would ever give you the time of day with how quickly and veraciously (sic) you seek to denigrate them at each and every opportunity . . .

that doesn't even begin to breach (sic) the subject of the rampant racist and bigoted absurdities that pepper these forums.

Online dictionaries are wonderful, they really are. Try using one before launching into your next rant. It'll be much more persuasive without the malapropisms.

Like it or not that's what drives traffic to the website. If I wanted a sober and disinterested assessment on things I'd read Track and Field News or Running Times, but I find myself drawn to Letsrun.

watch out for dark alleys wrote:

Frigging drug cheat. If you mean your apology, pay back all the prize money you cheated for. Here's a list to get you started:

http://athlinks.com/racer/results/58113438

gregmacd wrote:

watch out for dark alleys wrote:

Frigging drug cheat. If you mean your apology, pay back all the prize money you cheated for. Here's a list to get you started:

http://athlinks.com/racer/results/58113438

Well said!

So I'm curious; I've never actually lost to the guy, but I didn't receive travel money to a race where he did...

Even though I've only raced him a few times, I've heard stories about the guy; He would race multiple races on the same weekend without informing the race director of the second race; a race director once trusted him to advertise his race to competitors, and he only told people he knew he could beat; he would ask a race director to give him the hotel money instead of simply giving him a room, and then try to bum a room from a different competitor. You could tell he was kind of a douche.

Obvious moral dissonance aside, I still don't get it. I need a part time job to support myself outside of running, and I'm better clean than he ever was with the drugs; its not like there is some huge financial incentive to cheat. There's no real fame or glory in winning road races like this, either. I know how much doing reasonably well can help financially in one of the bigger road races (several months rent), but don't drugs cost that? Is EPO only like $100 for a year's worth or something? Because that just doesn't jive with my understanding of drug companies (it is for cancer treatment induced anemia, yes?), much less the cost of things on the black market. (Is the black market not more expensive than prescription in Mexico?)

Maybe Occam's razor is telling me he's just literally not right in the head.

Pete,

Consider sending an email to the Public Editor of the Times. She'll look into it. There is a link on the Times homepage.

Bob Dobbs wrote:

Online dictionaries are wonderful, they really are. Try using one before launching into your next rant. It'll be much more persuasive without the malapropisms.

I understand how irrelevant you must feel. But is pointing out a few typos really how you want to get attention?

Why don't you go educate yourself and form a halfway intelligent opinion on a subject and jump into the discussion in that manner?

Or just continue being irrelevant. Hopefully this little bit of attention I've now given you will fulfill your needs for today.

that really has nothing to do with anything.

The national enquirer gets a lot of readers, too, but I don't think those writers are delusional enough to think they're actually respectable journalists. The brojos haven't figured that out, yet.

Go Afrika wrote:

Not Amber wrote:

Makes me wonder a lot about Phil Reid, Peter Magill, Sergio Reyes, Nike TEAM LA, Linda Somers, all of those SoCal runners are under some suspicion. It's f**ked up.

It is interesting you say that because I have not seen any of these people racing lately. Just wonder if they are going to retire and...hide. Linda Somers is pretty obvious by her face that she is taking something.

How come we haven't heard from these guys?

This post has the word "Hell" in it. Please remove this post as that word is very offensive to my beliefs as an Atheist.