Why does Mary Slaney get a pass????

Look, here is the real reason why it seems like Mary Slaney "gets a pass" - no one cares about her any more.

1) How long ago was she competitive? The 80's? That's 20-30 years ago. Marion and Regina were this decade. And actually, I would say people are starting to forget about them too. I hadn't read a Roid-gina comment in months until this thread.

2) She's female. Again, most of the male posters on this site care less about female athletics than male.

So why does she get a pass? She doesn't, I just don't care enough about her to comment on it. Mary Slaney doesn't enter my thoughts unless someone else brings her up. The same is true of Regina and Marion, they just happen to be more recent.

When you get old you should be allowed to take hormones.

Once over the age of... say 45 - it should be a free for all. Respect your elders you little twerps.

I guess once we came to the conclusion as to why she shouldn't get a pass someone had that erased. So we'll continue to have our own ideas and conspiracy theories. Like anyone who has had something of value, once it's gone, they'll do anything to get it back. Mary was circumstantially a victim of this. If one reads the chain of events in her doping case one can see right thru the bullshit. Was it Malmo's response that got deleted? I know my explanation of her defense got deleted. I guess again, Mary gets a pass. yes, it was a long time ago, but numerous post competition awards and recognitions are still tossed her way on a regular basis. Witness the trials last year, the Oregon HOF, the usatf Hall of Shame, etc

I don't know whether Mary Slaney should be in some HOF or not. It doesn't really matter to me. In baseball, the HOF is a big deal, so debates about Pete Rose, Mark McGuire, and Barry Bonds seem important to many people. In track and field, who really cares about a HOF? People can choose to honor Mary or not. I'm somewhat inclined to think that she was a doper in her late 30s, and I'm strongly opposed to cheating and dishonesty, so I would be somewhat inclined not to honor her, but that has more to do with the character of people I choose to honor, and not about the legitimacy of her accomplishments in the sport. I feel the same way about other individuals who have been even more highly honored despite much stronger evidence that they were dopers.

Part of the reason that I've chosen to weigh in on this subject is that, despite the great collective knowledge of posters on letsrun.com, I don't think that many people on this site really appreciate how absurdly talented this woman was. Offhand, I can't think of any other runner, male or female, who showed so much talent at such a young age and at such an early point in her physical development, and I would be hard-pressed to think of another runner, male or female, who demonstrated such range, with world records at every distance from 800 meters to 10,000 meters -- either indoors or outdoors, and usually both. (Of course, Said Aouita, who was competing against much stronger competition and with much better world records in place, comes to mind.)

If you disagree with my contention that her demonstrated talent makes it less likely that she was a doper when she won world championships and set world records in the '80s, then we may just have a fundamental difference in our understanding of probability analysis, and perhaps we should leave it at that. I don't have a real strong opinion about whether or not she was a doper in the early '80s, but I do believe that her performances were well within the range of what was achievable by a clean athlete with such talent.

Jefe in the CO wrote:

LR's posts have great potential in killing this thread...

Perhaps, but Bayesian logic was used specifically in Slaney's defense (see

for an easily understood description of the case). Thus, Bayes' theorem was one of the factors that 'exonerated' Slaney in the eyes of USATF.

The problem, as documented in the article, was not related to an unknown false positive rate of the test, as much as it was an unknown prior probability (i.e., the frequency of drug use is not well known).

I meant this in a good way LR...

Jefe in the CO wrote:

LR's posts have great potential in killing this thread...

I'm mostly in agreement with you AN except that I don't think that out of this world talent alone can beat drugged to the gills talent.

Rojo don't go easy.

Salazar was her coach.