10/27/2025 - This thread started well before anything was confirmed by Iowa State.
A volunteer moderator deleted several threads on this topic. That's not the way this should work. We believe in free expression and have reinstated them and merged them into this one thread.
As we wrote at the time, "If there is no truth to these rumors, please contact us at letsrun@letsrun.com or give us a call at 844-538-7786 and we will be happy to delete them and issue a statement."
It ends up appearing that the rumors had some teeth to them. Earlier today LetsRun.com co-founder Robert Johnson emailed head coach Jeremy Sudbury to let him know about this thread and asked if there was any truth to it.
At 3:31 pm ET, coach Sudbury emailed me the following:
And coach Sudbury has confirmed to us that no one who ran in the A race at Missouri was impacted by the suspensions. We have asked him about the status of his #3 runner from Missouri as it appears he was arrested last week after leaving the scene of a traffic accident as shown here.
Previous thread titles included, "ALLEGED Doping Bust at NCAA Program. What Now?" and "Iowa State EPO"
Good evening everyone, I have emailed coach Sudbury again today and have an update.
Here is what I wrote him.
Thanks for getting back to me. I just was defending you on the messageaboard. As a former coach, I know these issues can be dicey.
My concern is that a lack of transparency leads to wild speculation. People are now throwing accusations about other teams, and runners etc.
1) Would it be possible to get a llst of the athletes who have been suspended? If not, can you at least confirm that no one who ran in the Gold race at Missouri was suspended as that's what your statement to the Stride Report implied.
2) Your statement to me said "Team rule violations." Can we get anything more specific? Is it related to performance enhancing drugs? Yes or No. If the answer is no, I think it would greatly help the image of you program to state that. If yes, are you going to be reporting them to WADA?
3) On the messageboard, it's been stated that the entire Iowa State team will be drug tested this week. Is that true? Even if it's not true, are you worried people will have doubts about the validity of what the team accomplishes the rest of the year?
If you'd rather speak on the phone or talk off the record, I can be reached at ***..
He reponded as follows.
I then wrote back and said it appears that maybe two things are happening at once as it appears your #3 from the Missouri A-race was arrested last week and asked for an update/statement about his status (and included a screenshot of the arrest record).
He totally ignored the question about PEDs. You'd think if his athletes are accused of taking EPO that he'd address that.
As others have said, its probably not really up to Sudbury what information he does and does not release.
That said, if it was NOT PED's, I think that's the kind of thing that the athletic department would allow him to state publicly. But he didn't.
Where there is (a lot) of smoke, there is fire. The guys were doping.
This post was edited 28 seconds after it was posted.
So now we have potentially 4 to 5 doped athletes and a car accident with a Foreigner (all recent) amd here you still are praising him. The only thing missing at this stage to make this a movie is murder.
To be honest, I don't think the car accident is worthy of a long suspension. Maybe miss conference but allmost certainly not ncaas. I can imagine a kid borrowing a teammate's car to go to the dining hall, getting into a fender bender and then freaking out as he doesn't have a US drivers license, etc.
You are posting as an ex-Arkansas athlete. You do know that Arkansas had a guy running for them in 2024 that was banned, right? They recruited a banned athlete - PETER MARU. The coaches had no idea he was provisionally suspended in Uganda when he showed up. They found out and let him go. Did we ever get a press release about that? Did they hand back the 4 points he scored at NCAAs in 2024 that had them finish 3rd instead of 2nd? No, they didn't (Interestingly, they don't list his time on their all-time indoor marks list but they didn't hand back the points at NCAAs). What about the 20 points he won at SEC indoors when he swept the 3k and 5k?
You think Sudbury is recruiting his #10 guy knowing he's a doper? Lol.
We hold coaches to ridiculous standards. They don't know everything that goes on in their athletes lives. But when the found out about bad things, they need to act appropriately.
No one calls for the firing of the Econ professor when a kid in Econ 101 gets a drunk driving arrest.
Rojo, appreciate your efforts here. There's only so much that can be done if they are hiding behind FERPA. Hopefully some people with inside info can turn the heat up around Big XIIs and nationals
So now we have potentially 4 to 5 doped athletes and a car accident with a Foreigner (all recent) amd here you still are praising him. The only thing missing at this stage to make this a movie is murder.
To be honest, I don't think the car accident is worthy of a long suspension. Maybe miss conference but allmost certainly not ncaas. I can imagine a kid borrowing a teammate's car to go to the dining hall, getting into a fender bender and then freaking out as he doesn't have a US drivers license, etc.
I don't think a car accident (even with leaving the scene, unless it as a DUI type situation) warrants a suspension whatsoever.
I wonder if there was something more to the "leaving the scene" or the incident in general that lead someone (a cop, a teammate, etc.) to say "oh my, why are there syringes here?".
For the record, 4 Cyclones ran in the B race, same course. Seth Clevenger almost won the race!
1. Ndiwa, Iowa Western CC, 23:42.1
2. Ronoh, Iowa Western CC, 23:42.4
3. Clevenger, Iowa State, 23:42.4
5. Allan Bonnesson Iowa State, 23:47.6
26. Isaac Rivera, Iowa State, 24:10.5
106. Emmanuel Galdino, Iowa State, 24:50.2
Btw, Galdino is an absolute middle distance monster with monster credentials! 1:47.02/3:38.26/3:54.23 (mile!)...8km cc is a marathon for him ... Kudos to him for running.
Going by the above, the only question marks regard the runners in the B race, unless I'm missing something.
Btw, I'm not inferring that Clevenger, Bonnessen, Rivera and Galdino did anything wrong, but let's wait till the case is finalised, hopefully very soon. None of these running monsters want the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
Is the Coach under any obligation to report athletes he suspects to be using PEDs to USADA and/or WADA? Could he face penalties from anti-doping authorities if it is discovered later that he and the school swept it under the rug?
Coach Sudbury stated that none of the first 7 Iowa State runners at Gans Creek, A race, are connected to these allegations.
"none of the first 7 Iowa State runners"... yes, interesting response. Rojo's question actually was:
"If not, can you at least confirm that no one who ran in the Gold race at Missouri was suspended as that's what your statement to the Stride Report implied."
As you noticed, there were 8 runners from ISU, and he pointedly said that the top 7 are not involved in these oh so mysterious team rule violations.
Did we ever get a press release about that? Did they hand back the 4 points he scored at NCAAs in 2024 that had them finish 3rd instead of 2nd? No, they didn't (Interestingly, they don't list his time on their all-time indoor marks list but they didn't hand back the points at NCAAs). What about the 20 points he won at SEC indoors when he swept the 3k and 5k?
What do you mean "hand back the points"? Is that a thing? Like the school can just nullify their own athletes performances after the fact and change the outcome of contests long past?
We hold coaches to ridiculous standards. They don't know everything that goes on in their athletes lives. But when the found out about bad things, they need to act appropriately.
No one calls for the firing of the Econ professor when a kid in Econ 101 gets a drunk driving arrest.
It would be quite a scandal if 5 PhD students of a prof would be caught cheating, be it by plagiarizing or by falsifying experimental data!
I do not see a ridiculous standard here. Now the prof might be protected by having tenure if he was just negligent, but if that happened pre-tenure to an Assistant Prof, good bye!
What do you mean "hand back the points"? Is that a thing? Like the school can just nullify their own athletes performances after the fact and change the outcome of contests long past?
Why would the coach be testing his own athletes, that's an NCAA thing. Also, every athlete who is caught for doping is almost always announced that they are under investigation, then if they are caught they would be banned, not suspended from the team. I don't think doping falls under "breaking team rules," but who knows? Maybe the athletes refused to dope and then Suds had to suspend them
That's not what rojo was suggesting. Vacating a team victory is one thing, "handing back" the points for one athlete and retroactively moving your team from 2nd to 3rd is different.
My question remains. Is rojo's scenario a thing in NCAA track and field.
So now we have potentially 4 to 5 doped athletes and a car accident with a Foreigner (all recent) amd here you still are praising him. The only thing missing at this stage to make this a movie is murder.
To be honest, I don't think the car accident is worthy of a long suspension. Maybe miss conference but allmost certainly not ncaas. I can imagine a kid borrowing a teammate's car to go to the dining hall, getting into a fender bender and then freaking out as he doesn't have a US drivers license, etc.
You are posting as an ex-Arkansas athlete. You do know that Arkansas had a guy running for them in 2024 that was banned, right? They recruited a banned athlete - PETER MARU. The coaches had no idea he was provisionally suspended in Uganda when he showed up. They found out and let him go. Did we ever get a press release about that? Did they hand back the 4 points he scored at NCAAs in 2024 that had them finish 3rd instead of 2nd? No, they didn't (Interestingly, they don't list his time on their all-time indoor marks list but they didn't hand back the points at NCAAs). What about the 20 points he won at SEC indoors when he swept the 3k and 5k?
You think Sudbury is recruiting his #10 guy knowing he's a doper? Lol.
We hold coaches to ridiculous standards. They don't know everything that goes on in their athletes lives. But when the found out about bad things, they need to act appropriately.
No one calls for the firing of the Econ professor when a kid in Econ 101 gets a drunk driving arrest.
Rojo, I am in general agreement with you here...we're holding the coach to a ridiculous standard. However, I vehemently disagree with your comparison to an Econ professor.
I am an Econ Professor. I don't recruit the kids or have near the impact/association involved in a coach/athlete relationship. If I were to pose a comparison it would go like this:
Every student in a graduate Econ program failed the Micro Qualifying exam. When asked about the situation it was revealed that the students all took Advanced Microeconomics with Dr. Bdubs. In that course there was one assessment, and Dr. Bdubs handed out the exam, and then left the room. Rampant cheating occurred, and all students got As.
Now this would be akin to Sudbury, the staff, and nutritionists cultivating a culture that allowed/encouraged PED use. I'm not sure that's possible...someone in the athletic department would've put a stop to it, there's simply too many people involved for it to be a secret.
If I were to posit an explanation, someone on the "B" team wants on the A team badly, and is either using, or procured (illegal) PEDs.
I understand this is a message board but the amount of pure speculation going on is astounding.
What more do you want a coach to do when he finds out players were breaking the rules?
There do seem so be an abnormally high number of speculative threads that are being highlighted by the algorithm right now. The BU track one that BU has denied, the Furman coach being under investigation which is also apparently false, this one which not only discussed ISU but started making accusations about OSU that were explicitly denied
Not sure what is going on here, but it’s almost as if someone took a page out of Russia’s playbook and is intentionally pushing a lot of false information that the site to its own detriment is highlighting.
The algorithm is some combination of number of posts or views or something and then it's automatically pinned or adorned as "hot on lrc now" or something. So not really an algorithm, but more of a basic sum.
They aren't highlighted because they are speculative, they are highlighted because a user made a speculative thread or comment and people viewed/read/commented a lot, so it gets automatically highlighted.
And on certain topics that lrc knows will be popular, they probably manually flag it to be pinned or highlighted as well.
This post was edited 49 seconds after it was posted.
So I know(20 years ago) when there are PED's involved(found or suspected) at a college athletic program.. the NCAA sends a testing unit to do just that...conduct drug test..do they still do that?
