If there’s anything I have learned in life, and there are a few things, it’s that
(1) people lie.
(2) even morally upright people lie
(3) to reiterate, there’s not a single person on the planet who hasn’t lied, outside of possibly Mother Teresa
(4) at age 30, people stop being so naive about this
(5) even naive 30 year olds can only “not see” so much. By that I mean, if you’re on a pro team, and you see these runners every single day, you’re gonna know what kind of person they are, both their flaws and their virtues. I concede it’s possible to be on a pro team and never see any evidence of doping; it’s not like Woody is going through Shelby’s clothes (though Centro might be). That said, unless he’s on the spectrum, Woody will be able to pick up on what kind of person Shelby is, and he will (likely) be able to deduce whether or not she is at least the type of person who would dope, even if, hypothetically, she’s not.
(6) people cover for their friends (which isn’t always a good thing, despite what some Machiavellian moron with no sense of Justice said in a previous post).
(7) but sometimes people will also betray their friends to cover their own as$.
(8) why are we assuming that Woody and Shelby are actually friends though? Anyone who has ever been on a team knows that not everyone will get along.
(9) money talks. As someone said in a different thread, “if you’ve got a family and are barely making money as a pro runner, are you honestly telling me you won’t let Alberto run some androgel on you during a massage and just not ask questions?
(10) even if Woody is naive, unless he’s genuinely really stupid, he is aware that Schumacher has been associated with Alberto Salazar in the past; not to mention that Centro, who was literally coached by Alberto, is also on the team. There’s only so much amnesia about ones coaches and teammates a person can have.
(11) on a separate note, does it bother anyone else that few if any pro runners are coming out denouncing Shelby? I remember there was that open letter with those signatures (Molly Seidel, Alli Buchalski, and I think Allie Ostrander were among them) on it that supported bans and clean sports, but none of the signers, to my knowledge, publicly came about and said “this is nonsense: Shelby is coping.”
(12) also with regards to the whole “woody is just being classy” debate…..guys….come on. You can be classy and call people out for cheating. In fact, I’d argue that covering up for dopers, even if they are your friends, is itself not classy.
(12) if you’re friends with dopers and you know it, you ain’t classy
(13) to be fair, I’ve really only talked to 3 pros about this, but at least among them, the consensus is that Shelby definitely doped and any denial of it is absurd…..but they’re scared to say it out loud cus they don’t want to get flamed by people, or lose funding, lose support, get on Schumacher’s bad side in case they wanna run for him in the future, worried about his/Nike’s power, etc