Doping Double Standard Continues: D Epstein Reports Tyson Gay Tested Positive After Seeing Doctor Favorited By NFL Stars

Nutella1 wrote:

The label says Testosterone and IGF-1. Both are clearly banned.

Why are the Brojos defending this CHEATER?

What is their agenda in this case?

Defending him? When did we do that?

Our headline is trying to get at the bigger, more important issue. The drug testing in the major sports is a joke.

We've always wanted to rid sports of drugs. If we can get the major sports to lead the anti-doping fight, maybe join WADA, then their money will help make that possible.

Our agenda is to shame the NFL, wake up the 'mainstream' press.

As for Gay, he's largely irrelevent in the grand scheme of things. Yes, I always like how passionate Gay was about track but am not defending him now.

As for the 'double standard.' The double standard is how journalists think of track and field as a dope ridden sport when in reality the NFL has lots of issues itself.

rojo wrote:

LetsRun's friend David Epstein has a big article out today about Tyson Gay positive test this summer. It's published both in Sports Illustrated and on Pro Publica.

Check out the homepage or this link:

http://www.propublica.org/article/cheat-sheet-the-tyson-gay-file

The skinny is he tested positive after seeing a doctor that is very popular with a slew of NFL stars and may have very well tested positive for a drug that is legal in the NFL (and MLB) but not track.

-Rojo

PS. We're trying to think of a clever twitter hashtag for people to mock the NFL's drug testing.

Any ideas?

How about something like #NFLReady! Read "Enough Already!"

#NFLDoped

#NFLDruggedup

#NFLTestingisajoke

American football isn't a "sport", it's a game. Unlike soccer (or many other team sports, including ice hockey and basket ball), the governing bodies for American football aren't members of the IOC, and aren't bound by WADA's or USADA's anti doping code; the USA also doesn't have anti doping legislation like some European countries.

The WADA code and banned substance list is arbitrary - it's an attempt to draw the line somewhere, and one motivation is to protect athletes from the harm that drugs can cause. Maybe it needs to be pointed out more that the NFL has little regard for the safety of players, and their comparatively lax stance on doping may be a good example, but unless doping becomes a criminal offence, it is governed by contracts that the NFL deliberately chose not to sign up to.

gay should be banned because for intent alone -- at a minimum, he thought he was taking undetectable testosterone.

re the double standard, maybe it should be the other way around -- why is dhea on the wada list? does it actually provide a benefit? perhaps wada should be looking at its list and justifying each item on it. the list has too many items similar to dhea that are of questionable benefit and that can result in lengthy bans. also, the punishment for an in-competition stimulant positive is still too potentially too harsh.again, no clear studies showing a benefit, yet athletes can be banned for more than a day for taking it during competition.

finally, what procedures does usatf have in place to ensure that its personnel are not dopers or enablers of dopers? (and by involvement in doping, I include credible but unproven allegations or suspicions of doping). These should be automatic bars for a job at USATF. Athletes should be free to elect a doper to rep them on USATF board, but there should be full disclosure of that person's history so that each individual athlete with such person can make their own decision about their trustworthiness. Why was such a shady person like JD hired as the relays coach? Did anybody at USATF know that JD was shady? Was JD shady when he was an athlete?

rojo wrote:

Defending him? When did we do that?

Our headline is trying to get at the bigger, more important issue. The drug testing in the major sports is a joke.

We've always wanted to rid sports of drugs. If we can get the major sports to lead the anti-doping fight, maybe join WADA, then their money will help make that possible.

Our agenda is to shame the NFL, wake up the 'mainstream' press.

As for Gay, he's largely irrelevent in the grand scheme of things. Yes, I always like how passionate Gay was about track but am not defending him now.

As for the 'double standard.' The double standard is how journalists think of track and field as a dope ridden sport when in reality the NFL has lots of issues itself.

Love your site and appreciate the no-holds-barred-board, but I can't help wonder how naive you really are.

Shame the NFL and wake up the mainstream press to the fact #BigPharmaIsTheDevil or something?

Of course journalists think T&F is a dope ridden sport, when they go to the most legit running site on the web they see that's all that is ever on the front page. Heck, sometimes you can't even get to the front page without giving your opinion of who is doped and who isn't.

Drugs are here to stay. The pharmaceutical industry is way too big to bring it down and athletes do not live in some utopia where they are protected from making completely idiotic decisions as T.Gay has clearly done. Honestly, who could possibly take that cream knowing they'll be tested? How dumb is he?!

Anyway, until genetic engineering takes over, drugs will be a thorn in anyone's side who doesn't just accept them. As John Fahey, WADA president has said, "The doping battle will NEVER be won." Ever.

The tighter the noose gets, the less people dope and the greater the reward to dope becomes. When the rules are lax and tons of people dope, the sport is flush with money. Which do you really want? Top guys are doping either way.

So what if they sort out the NFL Gay will still be a doper.

Maybe Gay can play in the NFL now.

I love track and I dislike doping in sports, but I would pay 50 times more to watch Gay play football with or without testosterone cream in his system than to run 100 clean.

I'm not proud of it. It's just an observation. Not sure why.

stupidandgayisbadcombo wrote:

gay should be banned because for intent alone -- at a minimum, he thought he was taking undetectable testosterone.

...and DHEA and IGF-1, both of which are banned, too. That's straight up two years here.

What's worse, he likely used the cream thinking it would help him as a masking agent (article describes this works in the NFL since they don't ban DHEA).

Trusted someone my a$$

"As for the 'double standard.' The double standard is how journalists think of track and field as a dope ridden sport when in reality the NFL has lots of issues itself"

This is the line you should have used in your original post. The only double-standard that can occur is in a comparison of the sports between each other. If one of the big four sports is touted as being cleaner than T&F because of less drug busts, then that is a big double-standard. But different leagues having different standards in a stand alone situation isn't a double-standard. Another poster started saying the same thing about fans comparing the sports, only in a comparison can there be inequity when the sports have different standards.

Exactly. When has the NFL claimed to be clean? I certainly don't remember it.

Also, letsrun is supposed to follow T&F and not the NFL.

Sure the NFL got problems but lets focus on getting T&F clean.

coachkritter wrote:

[quote]rojo wrote:

Consider these stats. # of NFL players over 300 pounds in the NFL

1970s: 1

1980-1994: 3

2000: 301

2010: 532

quote]

Have you noticed the general American public ? Plenty of 300 lb'ers.

yeah, well, probably the number of collegiate sub 4 guys would also show a large increase also. Does that mean anything?

just sayin wrote:

hasn't he been doping for a long time anyhow!

it's afantasy that any of these guys are clean somehow

he didn't pluck that 9-69 out of thin air

that takes serious juice to do that

^^this^^.

just sayin wrote:

hasn't he been doping for a long time anyhow!

it's afantasy that any of these guys are clean somehow

he didn't pluck that 9-69 out of thin air

that takes serious juice to do that

Oh the jealousy of the SKINNY distance runner. FACT: Tyson Gay was clean when he ran 9.69, he didn't test positive until later. He likely took that cream just once or twice because he was aging and his anti aging doc told him it was harmless not regulated substances.

Gay built his powerful physique in the weight room and got SHREDDED doing his sprint repeats (just like we do in the box). That's the whole story, there isn't more to it.

Gay built his powerful physique in the weight room and got SHREDDED doing his sprint repeats (just like we do in the box). That's the whole story, there isn't more to it.

have you seen his butt lately

He could probably make a $$$$Million signing bonus with the NFL! That team could boast of having THE fastest player in the NFL.

Intent to evade doping restrictions is obvious here. The fact is irrelevant that he's invoked a fallacious legalism that he probably doesn't believe anyway.

rojo wrote:

But the bigger story is he very well could have been given a cream the doctor gives to all of his NFL stars with no problem whatsoever as DHEA isn't banned.

I completely disagree. The bigger story is Gay got himself banned by taking something that listed 3-4 prohibited substances right on the label.

Did Gay receive a college degree? I am pretty sure he graduated from junior college?

Allyson Felix says she doesn't mess with supplements... all natural approach. Many others follow this as well.

For those athletes that want to take a cream, oil, powder, pill, patch, shot, etc., how difficult/expensive is it to send that substance to a testing lab and find out exactly what's in it before they use it? Seems kind of like a no brainer.