ZANE ROBERTSON POPPED FOR EPO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Claimed he went for Covid-19 vaccine, was given EPO instead.

I don't understand why you do the old switcheroo thing with your burner Twitter account. You're the one with the Kenyan runner fetish, not me.

Yeah, great job with the debunking. Awesome stuff. Sounded like they needed to be big superbrains to figure out that was nonsense.

Still, don't see how this is a win for you. There are still dozens of Kenyans getting busted (under the minimum of testing), so getting all bad mama over one single 'westerner', who had to leave to comfort of NZ in order to cheat, seems a bit odd.

Surely it shows there's a problem when athletes from around the world are EPO tourists in Kenya?

I knew his stride looked weird. This news confirms it.

Armstronglivs - the kind of guy to argue that the earth is flat even after he’s been launched into orbit (which actually wouldn’t be a bad place for him)

You know what, I believe Zane. I think I may be coming down with covid.

Zane was foolish in thinking that officials would give some Western paleface the same breaks given to the always smiling African cheats. Hah.

Everyone knows! It’s so obvious.

Please be rational and not let your hopes cloud your judgement.

imagine Robertson, a foreigner on a continent very unlike his own with languages not even close to his, training and figuring out how to get drugs. (Imagine yourself doing it where you live and are comfortable…not easy!)

Now think how much more difficult and suspicious that would be for him versus a person who fits in and has friends and family there and speaks the language.

Well sort of. Who knows. Her marathon time is about 3.5 mins faster than the fastest ever by a sea-level runner and she didn't have the advantage of the new breed of shoes. Strange times we are in.

Gold medals and world records to be untouchable, T&F.

haven't read the whole thread but everyone going on about Kenyan agency has maybe overlooked that it's probably not very likely Kenyan anti doping would send one of their officers to England to test a NZ athlete. So presumably the test was done by UK agency? am guessing that Robertson took a punt that Manchester 10k would not test him so maybe this is where the Kenyan Intel came into play

And Abdi was Farah's housemate, right?

But if Abdi's dirty and my brother Wejo beat him, what does that mean about Wejo?

Then that means Wejo must also be "dirty". "Clean" elite runners have no hope of ever beating a "dirty" elite runner, it's just what it is.

Mean him pale face who speak with forked tongue.

Wejo is a legend. Underrated runner who would have beaten a clean Zane Robertson.

Unbelievable, I looked up to this man so much… his story of how he moved to Kenya at a young age to purse a dream. Running long distance without any support from his home country. I’m a fool… I believed in a lie that these marathon greats are achieving things through hard work and determination. :(

Decent chance. How many other 30 min college kids do you know who dropped a low 28 and then When testing showed up faded away quickly?

I have no clue if wejo is clean or not. But I can say that about just about any runner at the edge.

More precisely, when an American running for a Nike club gets caught it's...crickets.

This is where something (or someone) needs to step in and try to get the Robertsons to talk. If the rumors that >80% of Kenyans are doping, this could honestly be the chink in the chainmail to crack the whole dang case open.

Yes, it would be extremely dangerous for Zane to start naming names. However, that information is still extremely valuable. If Zane is as opportunistic as he seems, I'd think he'd definitely take up the right opportunity to give it up--as long as he has full protection. I doubt he has many better business opportunities on his plate right now...

My question is: was he given the option to have a reduced sentence if he gave up names? This should be a top priority for all anti-doping agencies. It would be an egregious oversight on their part not to give Zane that option.

If I were a Phil Knight-esque person right now (someone with enormous amounts of money to burn and an interest in promoting the health of T&F), I would be making a proposal to Zane: offering him the opportunity to come fully clean with a comprehensive list of information that can lead to a full-scale bust of the entire doping system--and in exchange, receiving a huge chunk o change, along with all the necessary resources to protect him & family from the backlash he might receive (either setting him up somewhere in Kenya with proper protection, or getting him out of Kenya back to NZ, US, whatever). Maybe even set him up with a pencil pusher job to get him back on his feet. Of course, doping agencies can't do this, but no one is preventing an opportunistic individual from doing this.

Maybe it sounds a bit outlandish to do that, but there's a particular reason why I think Zane would be the right person to do this (as opposed to all the rest of the Kenyan athletes getting popped right now): As mentioned in this thread, Zane has had significant bad blood with certain people in Kenya in the past. He's not buddy-buddy with everyone there, and perhaps he'd be the right person to turn on them if he had the chance. Sort of, using that beef he has with them for a positive reason. It's possible that I'm conflating all Kenyans here--I don't really know the ins and outs of that, so if I'm really off base here, just tell me.

Anyway, I just think it would be a huge loss for the sport if Zane was given no reasonable chance to come fully clean, and instead was bought out by the underground doping circles in Kenya to stay silent. Anti-doping agencies cannot remain to simply be reactive, they need to start being proactive.

Also, as others have mentioned, I now begin to wonder if Jake is dirty as well. Would a barrier to Zane coming clean now be an interest to protect his brother? If so, could such a proposition as I described earlier be designed for both Zane and Jake to gracefully come clean and expose the systems they were using to dope?

I say the word "gracefully" yet acknowledge that doping is a terrible, nasty thing to do and is in no way graceful or could ever be graceful even by coming clean. And even in this hypothetical, it doesn't wipe the record clean for Zane, or for Jake if he is indeed doping.

nzherald.co.nz

Kiwi Olympic doper breaks silence: Why I cheated

@nzherald

Robertson opened up about why he decided to cheat, claiming it was a “one-off”.

Link:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/kiwi-o...

New Zealand long-distance runner Zane Robertson has admitted to cheating after he was yesterday suspended for doping.
The Commonwealth Games medallist was suspended by the Sports Tribunal for eight years after a prohibited substance was found in his system. He also tampered, or tried to tamper, with part of the doping control process, the Sports Tribunal announced.
The Tribunal banned him for four years for the presence and use or attempted use of the prohibited substance Erythropoietin (EPO) and another four for tampering.
Speaking on the podcast Runner’s Only with Dom Harvey, Robertson opened up about why he decided to cheat, claiming it was a “one-off”.
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“It’s been a pretty depressing and devastating day for me,” he said on the podcast.
“There’s many reasons and it’s just not one particular reason. I hate it so much that it’s just a one-off hit and I got caught. It’s been building on me for a few years. Frustration and anger at the sport itself and any elite sports, I just believe it’s not a level playing field like they say.
“I started to ask myself this question: why do people like myself always have to be the ones to lose or suffer. In the end, lose our contracts, lose our income, lose our race winnings, and eventually give up not having the ability to have a family ... that was one reason.”
He added that personal and professional troubles — including a “nasty divorce” — also drove him towards doping.
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“The other [reason], especially after the Covid era, prize money and races went down. Contracts were almost dropped as well. After the Olympics I was told by one of my companies we thought you would run better, and an immediate exit from the deal.
“Nothing was seeming to go my way. I had a lot of background noise away from the running year as well ... I spent a lot of my life savings just trying to survive. I was providing for myself and my wife at the time ... we already knew we were going to go through a divorce period. It was a nasty divorce proceeding.
“Some things led to another and a lot of stress was placed on me. I made some bad decisions in a really dark time.”
Robertson won bronze for New Zealand at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014 and competed at the last two Olympics.
- more to come