Salazar/Rupp/Farah ... Looking for an unfair advantage

So Rupp doesn't really have asthma or a thyroid condition? He just DNFed Footlocker his junior year for an excuse to get an inhaler, and tanked his 2006 track season for a smokescreen for thyroid meds?

What literature on thyroid meds and altitude training are you speaking of.....you are full of hot air.......sure, as it has already been said, thyroid meds (if you had a problem!) could help maintain a more consistent hormone load than if you were relying on natural production. Really, I don't think you understand what happens if you cranked up on thyroid hormone with normal physiology......you would go absolutely crazy if you didn't die of a heart attack first.....you would be so exhausted from your body dealing with the changes that any "bump"in EPO production would be drowned in misery. The only potential here is that someone could take the hormone to consistently maintain there own level of optimal health......which may help with training......

JustAskin wrote:

So what if Rupp/Farah are on some thyroid combo and sleep in a hypebaric chamber? None of this is on the prohibited list so what is the problem.

If an athlete is abusing a TUE to manually adjust his body's natural chemistry and achieve an optimal training/racing physiology... many might consider that an unfair advantage.

Whether the folks in question are abusing a TUE and whether "faking" hypothyroidism would actually assist an athlete are fair questions. But, in effect, you can see where that sort of situation would probably be beyond the "gray area" of, say, using an altitude tent.

I'm enjoying this thread. While I'm close to revealing the Endocrinology doc that worked with Carl Lewis and now with Al Sal's group , I'm not sure I'm ready to take that risk; however, the more intelligent amonst you - and that is few and far between - are on the right track. Thyroid meds influence testosterone, red blood cells, and other hormones.

OMG, everyone knows the HepG2 cell line they used is hardly a legitimate correlate to normal physiology.

UMD Suck wrote:

You guys understand that EPO was originally released by Amgen for people with terrible diseases right? And we still have either idiots or liars like Canova saying it doesn't aid in performance. My friend's grandmother was on EPO while undergoing cancer treatment and it didn't help her running either. By your logic that means it's not a PED. Likewise, I have taken both steroid inhalers and anti-inflams when sick and guess what, no world records right after my strep throat. Does that mean steroids are not PEDs?

If recall correctly, he's never written that EPO can't help performance in general, but that for those most talented of East Africans, there's no more room for EPO to improve performance. Obviously there is a limit, and Canova thinks he's found it.

Doctors should be liable for lawsuits if they knowingly prescibe medication that isn't necessary for an average person to go without. Hard training athletes should not be getting diagnosis for a deficiency due to their training. That is the issue.

The bottom line is if Track can ever be a true clean sport it needs to be limited to those who aren't on medication for anything other than anti-inflammotories or insulin if you are diabetic. If you have asthma then that sucks but you didn't have the cards to compete. Like I never could break 26 for a 200. Which was due to the genetics I was born with.

Life isn't fair. And the same should apply for an honest sport.

The casual fan has no idea of the extent of TUEs being used by Olympic athletes. These are the greatest athletes in the world and yet if you look at the TUEs you'd think they all have terrible health. I try not to think about this stuff because it is just too discouraging.

"Processing lactate similarly has a different ceiling in different athletes whose hormone levels (testosterone, thyroid hormone, etc.) and fiber composition allow for expression and manifestation of lactate transport proteins. Thyroid hormone, for instance, dramatically increases expression of certain lactate transporters."

"The monocarboxlylate transport (MCT) proteins are instrumental in this process, specifically the MCT-1 and MCT-4 "isoforms," whose expressions are increased via certain types of training and associated recovery stages. Expression of these isoforms during training is also dramatically increased by supplementation with testosterone and by thyroid hormone."

Dr RVT wrote:

I'm enjoying this thread. While I'm close to revealing the Endocrinology doc that worked with Carl Lewis and now with Al Sal's group , I'm not sure I'm ready to take that risk; however, the more intelligent amonst you - and that is few and far between - are on the right track. Thyroid meds influence testosterone, red blood cells, and other hormones.

Is this doctor in Utah or Texas?

another question - why did Rupp have to go to Houston to see a doctor for his thyroid condition? What's wrong with the MD's in Oregon? Is it such a complicated condition that you have to fly to Texas to get it checked out?

Im on thyroid meds and would love to know where you came up with that. I was devastated initially when diagnosed for needing these. I think some of you should re read sjm posts, Steve magness, he knows this stuff.

To me I see I red flag when more than one runner under a coach who only deals with a very small group has the same disability. Maybe that was our problem in the 1990's when we sucked. All of our thyroid glands were messed up.

It helps to have the good doctor on your team.

Dr. Stray-Gundersen works in Sports Medicine, in Frisco, Texas, where he has founded The SG Alter-G Center for Maximal Performance, Nutrition, and Recovery, utilizing advanced technology in the Alter-G Treadmill (www.Alter-G.com). Over the past 30 years, his areas of expertise, in a number of sports dedicated to a variety of "populations," are maximal athletic performance, fitness and wellness guidelines, training and recovery, nutrition, altitude training and acclimatization (co-authored the award winning study Live High/Train Low), and anti-doping -- developed The SAFE Program -- Safe And Fair Events, implemented in 2002 Olympic Games, considered by many as the most aggressive program to detect and deter doping in sport. He has served on two United States Olympic Teams as well as one Norwegian Olympic Team, and now consults for the Canadian National Team. He has been directly involved with and attended over 15 World Championship events in various sports.

Dr. Stray-Gundersen was part of the D2 Space Shuttle Mission directed by NASA where he worked directly with the astronaut team, and serves on the FIFA Executive Committee to establish Altitude Recommendations. He works directly with Alberto Salazar and The Nike Oregon Project (Olympic Runners), as well as overseeing universities and advising their programs. He is the author of the National Federation of High School Coaches Certification Requirement Course (physiology and applied learning), now mandatory for all new high school coaches in many states.

***

Doctor Jimmy helped to write the testing protocols.

Doctor Jimmy was an expert witness for Tyler Hamilton and his "parasitic twin" defense.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/2007/08/behind_the_scenes_in_park_city.html

They are doped to the gills!

We know that Salazar took thyroid meds, and so does Rupp, but has it been established that Farah is actually on thyroid medication? If so, that is definitely suspicious. According to Wikipedia, hypothyroidism occurs in "between three and ten percent of adults, with incidence higher in women and the elderly". The odds of a coach and both of his star runners all suffering from this condition is thousands to one against.

Don't forget Adam Goucher was also on Thyroid medication while training with Alberto : http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=21172

Kara was also diagnosed with postpartum thyroiditis... Just serach the web you'll find a lot of papers talkin about that...

That's quite strange!

Every runner that ran under Salazar in the Oregon Project was diagnosed with a thyroid condition at a moment or another during their career and most of them while training with him!