Official discussion thread on HBO Real Sports' feature/expose on Nike Oregon Project

I just watched the clip, but I'm not surprised. It's virtually impossible to see that Salazar was up to some shady stuff. At this point, I'm just wondering if we'll ever see some charges brought agaisnt him or a real ruling of any kind.

Prescribing prescription drugs without a license (an act that is illegal) to athletes without underlying medical conditions isn't evidence of doping? Sure sounds like it to me.

Les wrote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/sports/nike-oregon-project-alberto-salazar-dathan-ritzenhein.html

Prescribing prescription drugs without a license (an act that is illegal) to athletes without underlying medical conditions isn't evidence of doping? Sure sounds like it to me.

YES! Les gets it! Salazar was abusing the TUE system AND also handing out prescription drugs to his athletes without prescriptions. Some of his athletes have shared that taking these gave them severe adverse side effects, like racing heartbeats and excessive weights loss, EXACTLY why they need prescriptions to monitor the usage! If it's not "doping" in the WADA code, its absolutely illegal in the US.

And to those still saying "well, I don't see any illegal drug use," lest we forget the TESTOSTERONE MICRO-DOSING EXPERIMENTS and L-Carnitine infusions!

ruuuuneeer wrote:

This is why I cannot support Nike and buy their products anymore. There are plenty of other companies whose ethics are of a better standard.

I've stopped buying Nike clothes as well. Even if the never broke the letter of the law (which I don't believe) the definitely broke the spirit of the law. Seeing how far you can push to the edge without going over with questionable tactics is just as bad as EPO in my eyes.

YMMV

Kenneth Copeland, verified millionaire wrote:

Les wrote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/sports/nike-oregon-project-alberto-salazar-dathan-ritzenhein.html

Prescribing prescription drugs without a license (an act that is illegal) to athletes without underlying medical conditions isn't evidence of doping? Sure sounds like it to me.

YES! Les gets it! Salazar was abusing the TUE system AND also handing out prescription drugs to his athletes without prescriptions. Some of his athletes have shared that taking these gave them severe adverse side effects, like racing heartbeats and excessive weights loss, EXACTLY why they need prescriptions to monitor the usage! If it's not "doping" in the WADA code, its absolutely illegal in the US.

And to those still saying "well, I don't see any illegal drug use," lest we forget the TESTOSTERONE MICRO-DOSING EXPERIMENTS and L-Carnitine infusions!

Hate to be that guy but L-Carnitine does not do anything, even with the infusions. If it did it would be banned. And if not banned yet, then it would be so widespread you'd hear about it.

As for the T-gel experiment. This is probably the shadiest thing Salazar has done. It has been known that at some meet (cant remember which one) someone touched Rupp's shoulder and left some residual substance on him. That tells me that someone is looking to get Rupp banned. Knowing Salazar's actions, it is 100 percent completely expected that he would set up some experiment to see how much testosterone would result in a positive test. Whether this was with the intention to dope his athletes or not, it is wrong. However the results of this test were never concluded, and therefore there's no reason to assume his athletes were using T-gel.

Salazar did things wrong, and he continually worked in this grey area of coaching that leaves us up to debate whether he failed WADA and USADA code as well as moral code. But he is a coach, and no longer an athlete. NOP has been investigated to death and no athlete has ever been found dirty. I think it's best to leave it that way.

Pete Julian is doing an amazing job with the same athletes now. Hassan, Brazier, Engels, Koko, etc are all world class runners without Salazar being involved.

The medical report of the 16 year old rupp listing one of his drugs as testosterone.

Mailing PEDs in hollowed out books.

The bogus thyroid "meds".

Mo dodging the doorbell.

Decker getting busted.

The illegal transfusions.

Yeah, no evidence at all.

Experimenting on bust level dosing, on his own child.

Yeah, no evidence.

I loved the LOGO, nothing else matters

btw Magness should not get a pass on any of his association with NOP, go back and look carefully at the timeline when he was involved with the "experiments" and then how many months he took his sweet time finding a golden parachute out, he wasn't offended or alarmed just kept his options open until something appeared

(it would be like resigning on the last few days after four years of a horror show...)

Anyway this whole episode looks interesting, I want to see the covid part too and there is follow up podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cXEZBY8OM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yki9cyxP6CI

Les wrote:

Name one former East German athlete that came forward and was interviewed publicly about their PED use.

Ines Geipel

zxcvzxcv wrote:

Lots of Nike shills are on here. If NOP was doping its athletes regularly, as Ulrey charges, then they need to be taken down by authorities in the sense of retroactive bans, stripping of medals, return of monies.

Agree. Did anyone force Salazar to dope and try to dope the runners he lured with Nike money? Was Salazar bitter because he was unable to accept that he would never win the Olympic marathon? Did anyone believe Salazar would change after Decker was caught while he was her coach?

kmaclam wrote:

anacondarunner wrote:

"Ulrey says he was ordered by Alberto Salazar to regularly consume a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs."

Um, what? This is explosive. To my knowledge, no former NOPer has ever confessed to anything like this. Did the reporter explain what the "cocktail" of PEDs included? Presumably "PEDs" means "banned drugs" and not just garden-variety AlSal supplements like TestoBoost and the like.

This couldn't be more vague. I am just minutes now from whipping up a 'cocktail' of PEDs. It will contains some BCAAs and caffeine. Nothing to see here. Let's move on as suggested.

Just because nobody said it yet doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I’ll also assume a professional level athlete knows the difference between caffeine and PEDs.

If this is untrue, Salazar should sue him for defamation.

Yep, add on the recent loss of thousands of jobs in the oil industry, open borders, antifa still causing problems, and massive tax increases coming to the middle class, it’s a real shît show out there. Certainly, there are bigger fish to fry than spending any further time on something as silly as this NOP debacle (that has already disbanded and the coach banned).

The only reason he would want to test how much of it could lead to a positive is if HE was going to administer it to someone!

What good would knowing the amount that would cause a positive, if you thought someone might attempt to sabotage your athlete? It's not like you could dictate how much a saboteur would rub on your athletes! You have no control over it.

That excuse strains credulity.

It's nonsense.

This in itself is stunning because you've actually raised a good point for a change. I don't have HBO and don't plan on subscribing just to watch this episode but were any of the athletes asked some form of "so your performances were not real and they were achieved by cheating?"

If not, it would be interesting to hear their answers to those questions.

One thing that seems to be lost here is that the 'Real Sports' audience is not on the letsrun.com message boards. Many of the viewers are hearing this story for the first time.

The angle of the piece seems to be that Nike has funded and is continuing to fund these sorts of projects that either push right up against the line or have the power and influence to cross it with impunity. I was surprised to hear Nike is still funding the AlSal defense and that they still employ the team "psychologist".

The argument that "no one ever tested positive" was the same defense for Lance. It seems logical that Nike and Alberto had learned enough to give their athletes as much deniability as possible to not end up with the same situation (not that Nike has ever suffered any consequences).

Lastly, as stated in the piece, requests for interviews were made to all parties including Nike and they all declined.

Bryant Gumbel is married to the Long Island Medium. Strange world.

Should just allow all this stuff. Let the era of altered man begin. Hell, people at my office dope on Adderall; the 12hr workday is still alive. Instead of medals it's bonuses and watches.

There so much money pumped into sport. If an athlete really goes down for doping, it's not a failed test. They probably crossed a line with the wrong person or didn't grease enough palms.

Nothing we didn't already know. Only thing I found funny was Adam Gouchers prescense. Why was he even in the interview with Kara? Looked so out of place.