What has Alberto apparently figured out that no other coaches have.

junior wrote:

Am I remembering right that Ritzenhein included a sports psychologist in his credits when he began improving? Also that Salazar employs psychologists as a rule? From my experience inside the sport and also observing from the outside, psychological health is another aspect of training programs that is almost totally overlooked. In colleges where the resources are freely available there is no excuse for that.

Darren Treasure.

I was a formerly a National class runner back in the day (1983)training in Eugene. I wouldnt have taken any drugs even if my coach asked me to. Most serious runners are not going to take drugs to improve. That being said,one young guy did drop dead in the Athletic Wests restroom from a heart attack. He was 23. We supected it was drug induced... but we were merely speculating...........

The tests are horribly ineffective against anyone with a brain, a doctor, and a plan. Hence the involvement of MD's who are experts on PED.

think it's obvious wrote:

the secret is all the extras, going as close to the line as possible(and possibly over?), which ultimately to a large degree is $$$ related.........for you not to believe this, you have to believe that it is a coincidence that Galen Rupp happened to go to the same suburban Oregon school that Alberto coached at(and ran 13:37 shortly after graduating)--to me, it starts and stops there, it can't be the coaching, it's the extra's that are simply unavailable to almost all others

Then you are stupid and paranoid.

Why didn't Alberto have 3 Rupp's before, and 3 Rupp's after?

You cannot manufacture genetic talent; it is a fluke when you stumble upon it.

Look at all the coaches who "discovered" great high school talent...and never had another athlete anywhere hear as good...

This would make fairy tale sense except for that fact that Rupp was far more talented than the average "fastest kid in the gym class/school," from day one.

Sorry if I haven't noticed this idea in a prior message, but the athletes form a "biased sample".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biased_sample

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Alberto may be a very good coach but he also has the opportunity to get the best performing athletes, and also get them at the time he or she is peaking or close to peaking in his or her career. So while the athletes do run well, we have to ask, is it due to Alberto's influence, or would they have performed at the level at the time they were recruited by Alberto( when they were attractive to Alberto)?

Is it plausible to conclude (by induction- smaller subset of examples suggest the general or universal set e.g. great performances by athletes coached by Alberto suggest Alberto is a good coach) Does Al cause great performances greater than chance alone would suggest? I believe it is sensible to consider this fact before we think about his coaching methods.

Why didn't Alberto have 3 Rupp's before, and 3 Rupp's after?

You cannot manufacture genetic talent; it is a fluke when you stumble upon it.

Look at all the coaches who "discovered" great high school talent...and never had another athlete anywhere hear as good...

----------------

this might surprise some, but Salazar actually had other runners performing well at Central Catholic. There's certainly a relatively long list of runners who ran their best races under him.

Rupp is certainly a freak but that doesn't mean that Salazar isn't an excellent coach - or at least willing to do the work to become one.

critical thought needed wrote:

Probably, why wouldn't he want the best advice on alititude and the live high - train low model and it's affects on EPO? Ohh, wait, you are prolly assuming synthetic EPO is their angle rather than maximizing the natural EPO produced in the body the way Kenyans and Ethiopians do.

kenyans and ethiopians do live in altitude tents and and train at sea level. They also do not take thyroid and asthma meds, have blood platelette therapy, etc.

Well, I don't agree with that. But perhaps more to the point, what claims are you asserting aren't falsifiable?

-------------

I'm saying that those claiming that Salazar's runners are engaged in a super secret, high tech doping experiment cannot be proven wrong. Failure to test positive merely means that the project works. Failure of explicit details to leak out means that Nike bribed everyone or hushed things up. I can continue in this vein. By this view, all evidence that suggests his athletes aren't doping in fact is evidence that they are (just that they're engaged in a deep and pervasive conspiracy behind the scenes).

There is of course no way to prove this view wrong. Absence of evidence is merely evidence of wrongdoing by this view. Hence, it is unfalsifiable because there can be no disproving the argument. I cannot think of any proof that could be offered in defense of Salazar's runners. Stable blood work just means microdosing. Fluctuating blood work means doping. Ect. The phrase "Catch 22" is incredibly overused, but in this particular case it is apt to describe the position of many positing that Salazar's runners dope.

-----------------

I have no problem with anyone claiming, for example, that Lance Armstrong has a long history of doping. (In fact, I tend to think that anyone who believes otherwise is a bit of a dope.)

----------------

You may be right. However running is not the same as competitive cycling. While there have been positive tests (and BALCO), it's far from the absurd state in cycling. Also, none of Salazar's runners are truly elite in the sense of winning world championships or Olympic Medals, as opposed to Lance who thoroughly dominated one of the most competitive races in the world for years (to my understanding of the Tour).

---------------------

I have a different view about those who claim that Al's runners are dopers, but that's not because of a difference in "falsifiability." It's because I'm not persuaded by the evidence that I've seen, and I don't trust the people who are claiming inside information.

------------------------

Agreed generally.

Doping can turn an also-ran into a world-beater or even a WR holder. If AlSal is doping his athletes then he's doing a horrible job of it.

How quickly people forget Slaney's positive drug test and her connection to Salazar.

Well let's remind everyone:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1010143/index.htm

I still think he could produce better performances with his current athletes through outright doping.

blowyerbrainsout wrote:

USA drug testing is the highest in terms of scrutiny and yet know salazar athlete has so much as skipped a test (they have the option to do it actually up to 3 times) while other countries and U.S. sprinters have skipped tests and failed tests on the regular???

What the distance runners take is much harder to detect than what the sprinters take. Not sayin whether someone is guilty or not, but the fact is that there is no way to detect blood transfusion and that is what Landis confesses to have done, what Viren did, what italian distance runners did, what the 1984 US cycling team members later admitted to doing under federation guidance and what runners still can do and almost be gaurenteed to never get caught by a WADA test. What I am sayin is that the clean sheet as far as tests are concerned is a lame defense. It comes down to whether you think they are the type, and most Letsrunners cling to the idea that America's distance runners are not the type. Landis, Decker have both proven that even American sweethearts can be the type.

Why has no one brought up an old school performance enhancer such as blood doping? With all of Floyd Landis allegations against Lance Armstrong that the cyclists had switched to blood doping from EPO over the past few years it makes sense that top runners would blood dope as well no? Blood doping is almost impossible to detect and last time I checked the Oregon project and house was not in France where the Feds can raid an athlete's house whenever they choose to. It seems to me that it would be very easy for these top runners to blood dope with no risk of being caught. If the cyclists dumped EPO for blood doping due to improved drug tests, wouldn't a lot of world class runners do the same?

read the f***ing thread, dude

srsly wrote:

Well let's remind everyone:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1010143/index.htm

I still think he could produce better performances with his current athletes through outright doping.

" Salazar, himself a distance-running legend, admits he tried pharmacological remedies late in his own career, experimenting with the corticosteroid prednisone in an attempt to revive his deficient adrenal system and winning a 54-mile race in South Africa while taking the antidepressant Prozac"

Blood Dopers? wrote:

Why has no one brought up an old school performance enhancer such as blood doping? With all of Floyd Landis allegations against Lance Armstrong that the cyclists had switched to blood doping from EPO over the past few years it makes sense that top runners would blood dope as well no? Blood doping is almost impossible to detect and last time I checked the Oregon project and house was not in France where the Feds can raid an athlete's house whenever they choose to. It seems to me that it would be very easy for these top runners to blood dope with no risk of being caught. If the cyclists dumped EPO for blood doping due to improved drug tests, wouldn't a lot of world class runners do the same?

Old school blood doping is not impossible to detect if you keep blood profiles on all elite athletes, like they do in XC skiing.

Okay spudly, I'm not the original poster to whom you are referring to, but since you want to call "guys dumb as hell", let's see who is really dumb as hell.

Last time I checked she got a pr in Beijing and got beaten by 9 other runners. Six of those runners WEREN'T at Osaka in 2007, hence Goucher's bronze. If you don't understand what that means I will kindly help, IT WAS A WEAK FIELD!

Goucher set a pr and still got beat by 9 other runners. The top 2 runners who beat her in Osaka went 1-2 in the Olympics, beating her by almost a full minute!

I admire Malmo and he knows his stuff, but even he could argue this one with me and still lose. Goucher got a bronze because of the weak field and that's the only reason. While it's not her fault for who does and doesn't show up, it's still a fact. Two runners beat her in Osaka and less than a year later she sets a pr and get beat by 9 runners. Her marathons were not strong fields, in terms of depth. When there was depth, the WC, she got beat and Paula wasn't even there!

My question to you is, who is the one who is dumb as hell? Honestly, there are some pretty dumb people on this site, but you can now declare yourself near the top of that group.

This thread wasn't about Goucher, but since this guy called someone out, I felt the need to set him straight.

slow down----of course you need talent to leverage the extra stuff---and of course Rupp is super talented--but do you seriously believe it was just a great coincidence that Rupp came from same small high school that Salazar coached--as someone else articulated, perhaps there are many HS'ers out there , if given same access to tents etc, would be running 13:20's----