Mo Trafeh, 2-time FL finallist, 8-time US champ, US 25k record holder, has been caught with EPO, will retire from sport

I think what was shadier about Mo than anything (in recent memory) was when he went to Morocco for that 5000 to get a qualifying standard on the day the window closed. Miraculously, he hit the standard by about a tenth of a second to make the OT.

I don't understand Rojo's flippance towards his critics. I'm in sales and though I am successful I constantly reading books, attending seminars, etc.

Weldon and Robert, through their incredibly powerful website, have the running world at the tip of their fingers yet don't appear to care enough to improve their performances to take things to the next level.

I don't expect Rojo to be Barbara Walters, but watch some of her interviews and then watch a letsrun interview. Which one induces tears from the subjects and which one ALWAYS makes you cringe?

So, funny story about this. There had always been suspicion that Mo was a doping or at least accused of doping. I remember one instance where I and a few other runners from the race were all getting on a shuttle-van for dinner after a USA Championships event. My group of friends were pretty drunk and sitting in the back, of the van.

One of my buddies goes, well looks like we have a dirty winner at USAs this year! And he and a couple of others just talk about how Mo was seemingly dirty or thought he was doing shady stuff.

The passenger at the front of the van (who got on before us) looks back with a disconcerted frown. It was Mo Trafeh.

All in all, it was pretty funny looking back at this given recent developments.

The Big Lead wrote:

I don't understand Rojo's flippance towards his critics. I'm in sales and though I am successful I constantly reading books, attending seminars, etc.

Weldon and Robert, through their incredibly powerful website, have the running world at the tip of their fingers yet don't appear to care enough to improve their performances to take things to the next level.

I don't expect Rojo to be Barbara Walters, but watch some of her interviews and then watch a letsrun interview. Which one induces tears from the subjects and which one ALWAYS makes you cringe?

I'm with you. I usually defend the brojos when basement dwellers strike out at the brojos (my theory is that for a few lrcers the brojos serve as a substitute fathers to be angry at)...but the brojos do seem blind to what you are pointing out.

You attract more bees with honey - they have a huge site in the distance world, then they waste it by burning sources like this and Rupp.

funny, if true

The Big Lead wrote:

I don't understand Rojo's flippance towards his critics. I'm in sales and though I am successful I constantly reading books, attending seminars, etc.

Weldon and Robert, through their incredibly powerful website, have the running world at the tip of their fingers yet don't appear to care enough to improve their performances to take things to the next level.

I don't expect Rojo to be Barbara Walters, but watch some of her interviews and then watch a letsrun interview. Which one induces tears from the subjects and which one ALWAYS makes you cringe?

Agreed. Rojo missed a huge opportunity here. Time to learn from it or get someone who knows how to handle delicate situations.

Got to applaud USADA. With the bust of Mo and that no-name Ohio kid, it seems like they are getting inside info on people.

Thousands of bags go through customs, so they probably had his flight plans and targeted him. And they had to have some inside info that he purchased it. I'm liking this undercover type work they are doing.

To "You know who" yes, I can assure you it's true. I remember distinctly almost feeling bad when he looked back, because what if he was actually clean? But my friends didn't care cause they were *sure* he was dirty and were pretty drunk.

We laughed it off later.

He got out of the van, we got out of the van, went our separate ways and that was that.

His claim that he has purchased it and not consumed it ( or ever consumed a banned substance ) is not at all credible. The fact that he is attempting to fool people with this huge whopper indicates his next career move should a position with the IRS. As one of the worst liars of all time, he will fit right in.

Any details on how or where in the airport he was caught? Checked bag, carry on, random search of his carry on or person? I'm guessing he was taken aside for random screening, just his bad luck, even still how much did he have, must have been a lot, I'm thinking a couple of vials could easily be passed off as personal use or some other medication (insulin) you know the tsa is not exactly giving employees time off to attend Mensa meetings.

Tact or not. The questions WERE TERRIBLE. People ask direct and borderline insulting questions all the time, but if you're going to do so 1) make sure they aren't poorly written 2) you should probably write them in away that might have a 1% chance of receiving a response.

The kicker is that in your fist half of your questions you allude to him being dirty in high school. OF COURSE HE DIDNT ANSWER ANY OF YOUR QUESTIONS. Maybe, just maybe, if this was a phone interview you could have asked all of your slightly less insulting questions first and then ended on the high school question and Arizona question. The fact that you wrote those in an email and then expected him to answer any of the questions is MIND BOGGLING. Do you understand how email works? You and your twin brother are out of your freaking minds.

You had the dumb luck to start a terrible message board forum and now because of that you both have the false impression that you posses some kind of intelligence. As a result of your lack of self awareness you and Weldon are both infallible. The questions you wrote are clearly insulting, yet you both are incapable of observing this because your heads are so far up your own rectums. Frankly, your questions did a disservice to the sport of running by blowing an opportunity to have a useful conversation. More generally you continually do a disservice to the sport, which is only possible because of your standing in the sport. A standing that exists only because of pure dumb luck.

The Big Lead wrote:

I don't understand Rojo's flippance towards his critics. I'm in sales and though I am successful I constantly reading books, attending seminars, etc.

Weldon and Robert, through their incredibly powerful website, have the running world at the tip of their fingers yet don't appear to care enough to improve their performances to take things to the next level.

I don't expect Rojo to be Barbara Walters, but watch some of her interviews and then watch a letsrun interview. Which one induces tears from the subjects and which one ALWAYS makes you cringe?

+1

The questions should have been phrased better. The random accusation by the "coaching acquantaince" served no useful purpose. LRC always has good intentions. I almost always agree with what they write. But their "articles" are just an overgrown blog with no sense of professionalism. Always using "we believe that..." and "the staff at LRC felt that..." and "I assumed that..." The random notes and unnecessary over-formatting doesn't help. If the editor has a note, rewrite the story to include it instead of just sticking it in with some parenthesis and italics.

Where abouts in the US is Trafeh usually based?

I have read that he s[ends time training in Morocco, but where is his US base?

Does he have any connection to Christian Hesch?

Or Martin "I got caught the first time I took it" Fagan?

i.e. has he trained with or been based in the same place as these guys?

Just interested to see if there was any connection?

5 pages of comments and no one has once mentioned that Lance Armstrong passed hundreds, if not thousands of tests and was never busted? Mr. Trafeh's excuse is poor at best. If he has any desire for forgiveness by those on the sport that "has been the sole focus of my life for a long time..." he must fess up now. Dragging this out for months or years will do nothing for his reputation and will continue to tarnish our sport.

Mikey in VA wrote:

5 pages of comments and no one has once mentioned that Lance Armstrong passed hundreds, if not thousands of tests and was never busted? Mr. Trafeh's excuse is poor at best. If he has any desire for forgiveness by those on the sport that "has been the sole focus of my life for a long time..." he must fess up now. Dragging this out for months or years will do nothing for his reputation and will continue to tarnish our sport.

No body has said it in 5 pages because it's a given. But thanks for stating the obvious.

For a long time now, I have sat on the sidelines watching the BroJos throw cringe-worthy, supposedly "tough" questions at athletes, and this time I really have to weigh in.

Most of the people on this thread--including *especially* Rojo and Wejo--are misrecognizing what is wrong with the questions that Trafeh found "insulting." In fact, Trafeh's irritated response is part of what's allowing people to think that what's at issue here is some choice between "nice"(read: easy) questions and "mean" (read: tough) questions, where "mean" equals hard-hitting skeptical journalism and "nice" equals fawning puff-piece journalism.

But what's wrong with the questions sent to Trafeh wasn't that they were "mean" or "tough" or lacked "tact."

What's wrong with them is that *they were all leading questions.* As a journalist, as a lawyer, as a teacher--and I'm sure in many other professions--you learn early on that simply making a statement and then adding "right?" to it effectively forecloses the very dialogue you are trying to establish. Not only are you asking a question to which there is only one of two possible, monosyllabic answers ("yes" or "no"), but by forcing the interviewee only to engage with the statement you yourself have made, you radically curb any interesting elaboration from the get-go.

Again, this is not about being "tactful" or "nice" (but it is about recognizing that you can ask "tough" questions that aren't leading ones!). This is about recognizing that this is a situation about which your knowledge (and the knowledge of your readers) is severely limited--it's why you're asking questions in the first place--and because of that you cannot know the extent of what you don't know; and as a result, you cannot know every question you need to ask.

Good interviewing, which *is* "tough" interviewing, is not just about barreling down one line of inquiry as forcefully as possible. It's about following one path in order to uncover others. Leading questions, yes-or-no questions, statements masquerading as questions because they end with "right?"--these are precisely the opposite ways of accomplishing that. And this is why "why?" and "how?" questions are so valued--a basic point, but one that clearly needs emphasizing based on the "interview" that was posed to Trafeh.

The reason all of this is so frustrating for fans both of the sport and of Letsrun is that club-footed questions like the ones posed to Trafeh, under the guise of being "tough," are so transparently leading that someone like Trafeh has no incentive to engage with them. So an opportunity to learn more about an episode that is fairly significant within the current landscape of doping and USA track and field is effectively lost. We end up learning nothing that we don't already know.

Tsaholes wrote:

Any details on how or where in the airport he was caught? Checked bag, carry on, random search of his carry on or person? I'm guessing he was taken aside for random screening, just his bad luck, even still how much did he have, must have been a lot, I'm thinking a couple of vials could easily be passed off as personal use or some other medication (insulin) you know the tsa is not exactly giving employees time off to attend Mensa meetings.

Well, the statement said he was stopped by USADA (no doubt a law enforcement agency working with USADA). Since USADA doesn't do random stops at the airport it appears there was actionable intelligence. This may actually big the biggest part of this story.

Whenever there is a whiteout page, I know it is big news in the sport.

I also have a very mild case of dyslexia. I quickly skimmed the headline and read 'Mo Farah' and quickly read on to see what big news about him had happened. I freaked out and reread it twice before realizing it wasn't Farah.

completely agree. the questions, as posed, were leading and condescending. i wouldn't have answered them, either.