knows better. wrote:
It's not that he must be using because he isn't testing, it's that we can't know either way. Trusting in performance at the top of almost ANY sport today is foolish.
Dopers are usually more driven by the thrill of victory than by money.
I don't subscribe to the "innocent until proven guilty" view. There are lots of athletes who I believe are (or have been) dopers, even though I'm not aware of any positive tests for them. In fact, during various eras, I have assumed that just about every top athlete in certain sports or events was a doper, and that just about every top runner from certain countries was a doper, and that just about every top athlete with a certain coach was a doper.
But as to this particular athlete, I have just never seen or heard anything in the past twenty years that would cause me to have any suspicion of doping, so it just seems odd that the subject of doping was even mentioned in the New York Times article or debated on this thread. Do people actually sit around and debate about whether Jordan Hasay is a doper? What about German Fernandez, Ryan Hall, or Ed Whitlock? Has the sport of distance running fallen into such disrepute that any reasonably good runner is regarded with the same suspicion that was once reserved for East German shotputters and Mr. Olympia contestants?
Most of the mountain runners that I know wouldn't even eat a McDonald's hamburger or a Pringle's potato chip for fear that it would poison their body. (I wouldn't either, by the way.) They certainly wouldn't inject themselves with some substance that might damage their kidneys or liver in order to experience the "thrill of victory" that comes at the end of a 100-mile run on rocky footpaths out in the middle of nowhere.
If you're looking for dopers, just go to your local gym and look for guys with big pecs and bad attitudes.