GDS has left BTC, cites Houlihan explicitly

Anyone see Shalane instagram stories right now? Look them up before they disappear. Pretty passive aggressive. I love Shalane, one of myheros, but can't believe she'd rather stand with a convicted doper than a clean athlete she was supposed to be coaching.

i think jerry is probably a good guy, and I don't think everybody at BTC is doping. I don't even think everybody at NOP was doping. A lot of times things like that are an exclusive club. you cant trust every athlete with that information. I don't doubt jerry doesn't know what nandrolone is and even that shelby didn't purposely take it. My guess is that she was taking some cleaner, fast burning test that was contaminated. This is why she can say with a straight face that she wasn't doing it.

anyway, jerry may be a good guy, but he is a very incomplete leader, incapable of making hard choices for the benefit of the TEAM. It is very sad that the best running team in America is basically faceless. how many people even know what jerry looks like. I've seen it said before, maybe by ROJO, not sure. So many of the biggest issues in our sport boil down to the fact that outside of a few mega athletes, it is an amateur sport, and the people at the top don't do anything to change that perception or reality.

are they already down. don't see anything

Man, that is totally childish and unprofessional. I loved following Shalene's career, but now I wonder if she was too close to the original "Bowerman Babes" to be a fair coach to the newer generation. Shelby was her teammate and close friend so I see why Shalene feels the need to stand up for her/stay on her side, but as a professional coach she needs to realize she is making the entire team look bad.

But again, I think this all falls back to Jerry. He is the head of BTC and he is the one who needs to be addressing these serious allegations. After watching the Gault interview where she said they are working with Shelby's lawyers, etc. to make sure they can still coach her...my first thought was wow, Jerry should have instructed Shalene and the rest of the team to give non-answers about the Shelby situation because 1) it will be a distraction and 2) there's a legal process unfolding.

I also think that the BroJo's seeming defense of Jerry and BTC as whole stems from two points:

1) before burrito-gate happened, BTC was the ultimate protagonist group. They were fun, not nearly as slimy as NOP, and had great success with Emily Infeld, Jager, Lopez, etc. It's hard to root against your favorite team even when you know they did something wrong.

2) if the BroJos are outwardly critical of Jerry/BTC, they will lose access like they lost access to Salazar/Rupp. BTC has a huge stable of athletes who should make up the majority of Olympic/WC teams. If you lose access to those athletes, you lose content for your business/website.

This is why I don't understand the grief that Jon Green gets. The established names in this sport have some combination of bravado, holier-than-though righteousness, and success that makes them think they're impervious to criticism for their behavior and disrepect of athletes. We finally get a younger coach who doesn't have any of that baggage and everyone dumps on him.

I'd rather have Green than some old-timer who barks at other teams, keeps secrets, and runs their own athletes out of town any day.

Green gets hate because he’s threatening to the “old guard” of old white dudes that have had a monopoly on top talent in the sport for over a decade. It’s not too different from the reaction when Joe Bosshard got into the coaching game.

It’s the athletes — particularly women — who are voting with their feet and making it clear that Al Sal / Schumacher / Haas / Gags, et al aren’t the only games in town anymore.

I’ve lost an enormous amount of respect for Shalane Flanagan over the last 72 hours. It’s hard for me to appreciate her NY win at this point.

Add that to losing all respect for Rojo who participation to this fiscussion accounts for ignoring the most importing arguments and trying to paint selling a t-shirt and giving the money to S.H as being impartial.

hello dullard

do you have an answer ?

you know, I appreciate GDS transparency but she still didn't specify things bringing up more questions than answers. Was shelby training with them? living with them at altitude? traveling with them?

Great to see the letsrun community pretty strongly united in support of GDS on this. I wonder if any other BTC athletes will follow suit.

GDS had an excellent exit strategy / option. Not all world-class athletes have access to a national training center with excellent coaching. And remember the footware restrictions...

"And I think it’s really important to consider who you associate with. We don’t get to choose our parents, but we certainly get to choose our friends and our coaches and who we want to include in our circle and put our faith and our trust in. I think it’s really important to think about who you include in your professional circle in this sport, and I think that who you choose to allow in says a lot about you.”-Shalane Flanagan, in 2017

i don't want to come off as a kiss a$$, but I love ROJO and WEJO.

THey are two guys who are HUGE fans of the sport and have done a lot to keep fans informed and entertained over the years. It is unfortunate that they have been tasked by some to be hard hitting journalists. That shouldn't be their job, and it certainly is not a profession they went to school for. Let them have fun and keep doing what they are doing for the sport. It's not their fault that major media entitities don't give a crap about our sport and don't cover the hard hitting stuff that is needed.

They strike a pretty good balance of hitting some journalistic type endeavors while also being friendly enough to pull off insider status.

Keep doing what you're doing BROJOS and JG.

LOL - how times have changed.
Flanagan is also on the record with this, after Jeptoo’s positive test before Chicago (before it was clear that she also doped before Boston):

and

The Brojos call themselves journalists. I respect what they've done for the sport. However, Rojo on this very thread has referred to himself as a journalist. If you claim that, your reasoning and sources are going to be fact checked and debated. Your ethics are important whether you like it or not. Have all the crazy opinions you want but if you're a journalist your facts have to be sound. People have to trust that you are at least approaching your subjects with a measure of objectivity. Selling shirts in order to provide money to a convicted doper, who is currently banned from the sport by several regulating bodies of note, is far from objective in my opinion. You can't have it both ways.

"journalist"

I can't imagine how difficult it would be to follow this sport without letsrun. it boggles me how little people appreciate what we have here.

Of course not every Nike athlete is doping but most who have been under investigation recently are ironically Nike athletes. It’s not that fvcking hard to not take banned substances. Just cook your own organic food and if you need to take a bunch of sketchy supplements have them lab tested at least.

I agree.to get anywhere in most sports you have to play the game.usually that means cocktails of drugs.everyone does it.