David Epstein/Pro Publica/BBC Story: Former Team Members Accuse Famed Coach Alberto Salazar of Breaking Drug Rules

Cain? wrote:

How does Cain fit into this equation? Is her recent departure from Portland related to her rejecting further use of banned substances? Is her recent performances indicative of her true fitness before drugs?

Now that's a crazy conspiracy theory I hadn't thought of. I didn't think we'd top the one I heard two weeks ago that Mo Farah lost the Doha 3k on purpose so the otheres would think he was vulnerable in a kick but yours is a just as good.

carefree holiday wrote:

two and a half years ago....

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5002059&page=2

Please email me at

. You clealry have inside info an David Epstein needs to get in touch with you.

It's 2 am and i'm just coming to this thread so maybe I'm tired and not thiinking clearly, but "A Duck" couldn't your reasoning apply to Salazar - or are you actually saying that. You tell yourself everyone does it and it's just a little Androgel and create that NARRATIVE In your mind.

rojo wrote:

Cain? wrote:

How does Cain fit into this equation? Is her recent departure from Portland related to her rejecting further use of banned substances? Is her recent performances indicative of her true fitness before drugs?

Now that's a crazy conspiracy theory I hadn't thought of.

What's so crazy about it? Forget the idea that Cain was doping herself, as it's not central to the issue. You don't think that Mary's parents would have pulled her ass right out of Oregon if she told them what was soon to come out? And something tells me that AlSal braced his athletes (not just Rupp) about the story that he knew was coming out today (and he did know). Would he have wanted them to be blindsided? I'm sure he was like a good field general and assured the troops that the enemy was not to be taken lightly, but also not to be given any real credence, and that the truth (the bullshit NOP version of it) would prevail in the end after the team weathered a few hits.

Was Ritz leaving recently a coincidence too?

The way we see the TUE used actually made me think less badly of people doping without one.

Is access to getting a TUE on a level playing field? I doubt it.

The way we see the TUE used actually made me think less badly of people doping without one.

Is access to getting a TUE on a level playing field? I doubt it.

Is TUE a pay to play deal?

You are incorrect.

It's not just magness and the Gouchers. The report says that at least 7 people have gone to WADA. So on the program, there were at most 5. 2 gouchers, Stiner, Magness and "Mike". There are two more.

This reminds me of the OJ case and how the jurors got the logic all wrong. Yes, one of them coudl be lying. IT's easy to have reasonable doubt if there is one person making a he said - she said type allegation. But 7? Remember it only takes on violation to be banned.

It's hard to explain away 7 allegations.

And there is corrobating evidence. Goucher's got the pills, Magness the picture, stiner the check and presumably the doctor that Salazar berated about the IV drip could be interviewed as well.

If Epstein was a real investigative reporter, one would think that he would be able to investigate the claims that he himself made:

"Kara Goucher, the nation's most prominent female distance runner."

"Kara Goucher, the most prominent female runner in America . . . "

Uh, no. Not now, definitely! Actually, not ever. No national championships or No. 1 US rankings since 2009. And being No. 1 in one event still leaves "most prominent" runners in the several other distance events.

Here's what I'm stuck on between all this:

All of the Rupp certified BS just leads me to believe that they got his cycle wrong and feared testing positive so they just avoided racing.

I also don't understand why some of you would think Magness would just flat out lie about this.

Mo's Farah wrote:

Farah makes a great gray-zone statement: ...always followed WADA rules...

Oh dear, doesn't he sound just like Lance?

It's pretty clear you want him drummed out the sport - personally I'll hold off until we have more information. I just wish you had some consistency on who you want blackballed - again we have an Italian coach who was active in the EPO era that claims that EPO doesn't work on his athletes. The chances of him not administering EPO to his athletes is about zero - yet you give him a forum for his views. There's easily as much circumstantial evidence that he's a cheater as Salazar yet you have no problem with him. Same with Paula Radcliffe who you also defend.

Renato Canova wrote:

What I say is that tough and proper training for the best African runners, born and training in altitude, produces physiological effects that can't be enhanced by any blood doping coming from external sources.

Yes, I am well aware that this is what you say. For my part I might say that you can't get pregnant the first time, and only gay men are susceptible to the HIV virus, and the Earth's only natural satellite consist almost entirely of muenster cheese.

But unless you can back up your banal absurdities with even the vaguest of objective data, you sound like a fifth-degree apologist, and a lame, clumsy one at that. Those who have prefaced their posts to you with words like, "With all due respect..." are being a lot more charitable than is warranted.

A Duck wrote:

The point is, we create biases in our heads and then CREATE a narrative in our mind, which we repeat to ourselves over and over again until we believe it is true.

So, having expended a good many words saying absolutely nothing meaningful, try explaining away the Androgel evidence, the check to Stiner from Salazar evidence, and the pill-bottle evidence on the basis of cognitive psychology. It's almost as if you and Renato are in a race to see who can plumb the greatest depths of gloriously hollow rhetoric in the shortest amount of time.

And by the way, nice use of the royal "we." Speak for yourself, because virtually no one here is associating himself with your patently biased claptrap.

Chet Manly wrote:

I'm curious on why people are so confident these accusations are true because they are coming from the Gouchers and Steve Magness

This is what is known as a category error. I don't think a single person convinced of the veracity of the allegations is convinced of them because they come from the Gouchers and Magness (and more than a few others, by the way). I do see a number of people who suspect that the allegations are not true specifically because they come from the Gouchers, always a favorite whipping boy-girl on this mess of a forum.

Your casual dismissal of evidence that is clearly very pointed and damaging to claims of innocence marks you as someone without a lot of mental wattage at your disposal. You sound like a skeptic of evolution who remarks, "All we really have is a wealth of fossils arranged in just the strata we'd expect, a load of DNA evidence that confirms Darwin's 150-year-old hypotheses, and direct observation of natural selection in both the lab and the wild. That's really pretty scanty when you get right down to it."

an interesting programmge, but it raised more questions than answers

no smoking gun - but it could be a turning point

Mr. Magoo wrote:

By the way, only about a third of the material recorded by Daly's team was shown in the program as a result of time constraints. Some of that went more into genuine PEDs such as EPO. Maybe if you were privy to this material, you wouldn't be so resistant to reality.

I'm not buying it. If they had evidence of EPO usage David would have written about it on ProPublica.

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole in terms of this report. One individual item can be disputed but in the whole there is a lot of stuff that needs to be accounted for. It is time to find the truth. Nike needs to open up the doors and instead of attacking the "reporters" Alberto and Galen need to be an open book.

Nike should offer to pay for the attorney fees of any of its athletes/ex-athletes who want to testify or are worried about getting sued. Clearly, there is a culture of fear with people talking anonymously.

(And Tim Layden said there isn't a reporter he has more respect for than David Epstein).

Amerikano wrote:

Chet Manly - can you explain why Abebe Bikila won the Olympic Marathon barefoot in a WR? Or how Kip Keino won the 1968 Gold Medal, beating Jim Ryun in his prime? Or what about Henry Rono breaking like 4 WRs in 81 days as a college athlete? And all of this was before the sport became organized with good training programs, tons of athletes training at high levels etc..

That's the rest of the iceberg. A relative few athletes improved the records by staggering amounts between 1939 and the end of the 1960's. Even today, 3:33 and 3:51 raises questions. Why do people suppose that a much smaller pool of runners was doing the same on pure talent and inferior training back then?

Doping did not start with the advent of doping control, doping control started because of doping. There is no question which came first, and there's no question what the dope was - the drugs that were first tested for, narcotics and amphetamines. Ironically, these are the drugs most successfully banned because they only work in competition and are nearly impossible to mask.

It's true the altitude-born Africans may have an advantage, and that may explain why Keino was the only major 60's miler to remain competitive into the 70's. But it's also true that they were nowhere near dominant until the late 1980's when out of competition testing began. When EPO hit in the early 90's, world records that had stagnated for years dropped dramatically (5000 nearly 20 seconds, and 10000 by nearly 45 seconds) by the end of the decade, almost exclusively to Kenyans and Ethiopians.

Where were the east Africans of that caliber before the 90's? It's not like they weren't trying, but good as they were, next to the 90's guys they were nothing. Rono was only 17 seconds better over 10,000 than Ron Clarke 13 years earlier, and 10 seconds better over 5000. That's only about half the improvement Geb, Tergat and Komen achieved in less time. Ngugi won 5000 gold but never broke 13:10. Ondieki was good in the 80's but never broke through until his 93 10,000 WR, and even that was only 15 seconds better than Mamede 9 years earlier.

Maybe EPO doesn't work on east Africans. But if not, then it doesn't work on anybody. Why would the people it did work on start falling behind as soon as it was around?

How many allegations were on Lance Armstrong before he finally had to give in? How much evidence was finally amassed in an attempt to take him down?

I think Nike doping lab could find a way to give Rupp and Mo an advantage without using banned substances, namely thyroid meds. I think with all the supplements and medication these guys take, these reports and other things don't exactly point to banned substances. Magness' picture can be explained with the Testoboost claim (though it is flimsy), Kara wasn't taking a banned substance (she claimed it was thyroid meds that weren't prescribed), the check and IV drip don't exactly prove anything as it's not like a check cut out for a hundred dollars or so is proof of a bribe or anything of that sort.

Unless they have more concrete evidence in the other testimonies (maybe Mike's got something?), I can't see anything happening about this. Kara was an athlete under Salazar for multiple years and the only concrete thing she has is a bottle with his writing on it? It just doesn't seem like enough.

Anyone familiar with either Rupp or Salazar can tell you those responses were written by someone else.