Contrary to your uninformed speculation, there was a deep investigation of the alleged use of this "illegal practice" into Magness, and about a half dozen NOP athletes. There is a basis in the AAA Panel findings that these NOP athletes were not recipients of this "illegal practice". There is nothing else in the report, suggesting and NOP athletes were otherwise subjected to banned substances or methods by Salazar. You say I should look outside the report, but without the report, there is no other basis for any of your suggestions regarding NOP athletes being doped. You want to give your imaginary ideas strength by linking it to the convictions, but in order to do that in an intelligent way, you need to understand what the scope of the convictions are.
Armstronglivs wrote:
Rekrunner, however much you refer to the report your argument depends on that part of the investigation that didn't find evidence that NOP athletes were doping. But that wasn't the focus of the investigation. Its purpose was to establish that the allegations made by the whistleblowers against Salazar were true. It did that. Hence the ban.
But the further question of whether Salazar's athletes were doping would have required an investigation into each and every one of them. This would have been enormously difficult logistically and would easily have run into legal obstacles. There is almost no evidence regarding individual athletes that would stand up before any tribunal unless it is failed tests, or 3 missed tests. Without that kind of evidence a case against any of the NOP athletes wasn't going to stack up. In the absence of such evidence, which of those athletes were voluntarily going to come forward and tell USADA that Salazar had been doping them? Given they had chosen to work with him, such an expectation would be naive to the point of absurdity.
The result then is an investigation that could prove very little, but still enough to impose a significant penalty on Salazar. But the elephant remains in the room: a coach who commits doping violations is doing that for his athletes. How can they not be involved? Lack of hard evidence doesn't resolve that question, it only points to the difficulties in answering it.