UKAD is ready to fight any attempt by WADA to seize its stock of Sir Mo Farah’s urine and blood samples

casual obsever wrote:

larkimm wrote:

You're bring a lot more to the table than the AAA outcomes though. Don't misunderstand me, I fully appreciate why there is suspicion about Salazar / NOP beyond the matters he was sanctioned for - I'm not completely daft!

There's nothing to be gained by going over the old history around his time as a runner nor the picture with Decker. We're not going to get any new info there to conclude one way or another.

No I don't, points 1 - 7 are all from the decision pdf. USADA did go over the old history, and rightfully so imho, to paint a picture of a long time testo cheat.

I've only done a cursory check, but couldn't find the word "Decker" in the decision document. Nor could I find anything which refered to Salazar as a Testo cheat. But if you point me to the specifics, I'll retract it.

The length of the bans was not determined by the panel, they were as set down in the regulations. They did not, inter alia, that they considered some of the breaches to be technicalities rather than doping.

The report and its outcomes allows everyone to agree that Salazar has been convicted of doping offences. What it doesn't allow for is the exaggeration of those convictions to be extrapolated to firmly support the long held views of many that Salazar is a cheat, that he doped his athletes, that athletes such as Rupp and Farah were doped etc. All those things *may* be true, but the report doesn't confirm or deny that. (And what if any of his appeals are successful?)

I read the report as someone who is, I will freely admit, predisposed to believe that athletes like Farah are clean. And as someone who is actually happy to accept that some coaches will push the boundaries as far as the law will allow into the grey areas, and that that should be allowable. With those blinkers on, I read the AAA decision document as convicting Salazar of technical infringements, none of which directly impacted the training or race performances of his elite athletes.

I wish others would recognise that they come to the report with their own blinkers and predisposition.

If there is / was a proper doping setup in NOP, I am devastated that USADA has failed to identify it and convict athletes and coaches.

If there isn't / wasn't, then what we are seeing is as good as we'll get evidence of that.

a) Salazar cheating, see p. 317.

b) Decker, sorry, that's indeed not in there. But it's public knowledge too.

c) Blinkers, well, I call it knowledge and experience. See point a), which I knew since decades.

When doping helps a couple of percent, and over 44% dope, 18% blood-dope, you cannot be dominant without doping (and all of that is established in peer-reviewed publications, for everyone to see). Especially not when history shows that you are not exactly the talent of the century, like Farah until 2010 and Radcliffe until 2000.

d) For Farah, add the Aden and Driouch connections and his lies about it, and the testo gel sitting on the counter when he was staying with Salazar.

e) For Rupp, add the suspiciously elevated testo level in the buildup to Rio (USADA email).

In conclusion, I see Salazar's ban as well deserved, kind of an Al Capone scenario. It can only be good for the sport that that cheat finally got stopped.

And I don't criticise you for having that opinion. I just would like the debate to be held more in an atmosphere which says "OK, I can see that interpretation, but I disagree because of facts ABC".

Just on the Salazar doping, the line is:-

"Respondent testified that he first used testosterone for at least “some months” in 1991,

four years prior to retiring from competitive running."

I'd not read that line before as being an admission of doping, I'd presumed it was on the basis of being prescribed to address medical issues - but that could be my blinkers. Did the transcript (referred to in the footnotes) make that any clearer?

Joplas wrote:

If Kenya or Ethiopia ever refused such a request, Letsrun would blow up so badly that the website would shut down due to overwhelmed servers

I’d wager that Mo Farah and Lord Coe are about as hated as anyone else on this forum. Personally I dislike Mo more than doping Africans because doping Africans generally keep their mouths shut and keep to themselves.

The difference between AK’s anti-doping apparatus and UKAD is that one actually seems to be trying to clean up the sport while the other is trying to cover its (overLord Coe’s) tracks.

I'd bother replying, but as you (and so many others) are caught up in that way of thinking there'd be no success.

Might be worth listening to this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dfqn

So it would appear that this is yet another pseudo-scandal fabricated by the UK press, who seem to love to attack themselves, their heroes, and their organizations, based on a hypothetical that never happened. "On the specific subject of the Nike Oregon Project, in Nov. 2019 we proactively offered to assist WADA in their endeavors and to date we have received no such request for any assistance."https://www.reuters.com/article/us-athletics-doping-ukad/uk-anti-doping-body-says-wada-has-not-asked-for-retesting-of-samples-idUSKBN1ZM0HO

the hyena you’ll see wrote:

Joplas wrote:

If Kenya or Ethiopia ever refused such a request, Letsrun would blow up so badly that the website would shut down due to overwhelmed servers

I’d wager that Mo Farah and Lord Coe are about as hated as anyone else on this forum. Personally I dislike Mo more than doping Africans because doping Africans generally keep their mouths shut and keep to themselves.

The difference between AK’s anti-doping apparatus and UKAD is that one actually seems to be trying to clean up the sport while the other is trying to cover its (overLord Coe’s) tracks.

Wrong!

Joplas wrote:

While Kenya is working hard to make sure that athletes are available for testing and that dopers are heavily sanctioned, the UK and USA are busy defending dopers and coming up with lousy excuses like the ones on this thread and other bogus excuses like tainted meat. If I ever hear someone calling for Kenya to be banned I might vomit. Jemima Sumgong was banned for 8 years and nobody in Kenya fought the ban. UK is fighting tooth and nail to protect a known doper.

+1

EGGsactly! The hypocrisy is flabbergasting.

El Keniano wrote:

Joplas wrote:

UK is fighting tooth and nail to protect a known doper.

+1

EGGsactly! The hypocrisy is flabbergasting.

Which "known doper" is that then? You mean the guy who won a load of medals by being fractionally faster than some others, consistently, but never being fast enough to get close to the fastest times ever, that US keyboard warriors hate for no good reason other than he's not an American white boy?

larkimm wrote:

I'd not read that line before as being an admission of doping, I'd presumed it was on the basis of being prescribed to address medical issues - but that could be my blinkers.

Hypothetically, you could be right (though I suppose AAA would have mentioned it, considering how nice they were to Salazar), but even if so, that would still amount to doping because he didn't get a TUE, base training, out-of-competition or not (see Kiprop).

casual obsever wrote:

larkimm wrote:

I'd not read that line before as being an admission of doping, I'd presumed it was on the basis of being prescribed to address medical issues - but that could be my blinkers.

Hypothetically, you could be right (though I suppose AAA would have mentioned it, considering how nice they were to Salazar), but even if so, that would still amount to doping because he didn't get a TUE, base training, out-of-competition or not (see Kiprop).

Maybe, maybe not - I have zero insight into what the rules were then in terms of in comp / out of comp use of certain substances. Obviously I'd be surprised if use of T out of comp was allowed, but equally if that was before Whereabouts and OOC testing it might be entirely normal to take products which wouldn't be allowed on comp day and then seek TUE only at competition stage to ensure that any post race testing which showed up PEDs was made allowable. Or alternatively, if he was prescribed T to boost naturally low levels, comp testing might not have shown any anomalies, and that might have been considered "ok" at the time?

Are the transcripts available online anywhere, or are the references in the footnotes of the report meaningless to the public as only the participants can access them?

OOC testing started in 1985, but was very rudimentary in the last century, so Salazar wasn't really risking anything. Admittedly it is somewhat unfair to single out Salazar/Athletics West, as at that time doping was viewed as a patriotic duty, and our USOC/USATF almost openly protected our "cheats", see for examplehttp://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-08-03-1984-testing_N.htmhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2003/apr/24/athletics.duncanmackay

"There were hundreds of people getting off," he said. "Everyone was treated the same."

Lewis has now acknowledged that he failed three tests during the 1988 US Olympic trials, which under international rules at the time should have prevented him from competing in the Seoul games two months later.

Back in October, I looked for the transcripts, but couldn't find them. Maybe they've leaked by now, I don't know.

larkimm wrote:

El Keniano wrote:

+1

EGGsactly! The hypocrisy is flabbergasting.

Which "known doper" is that then? You mean the guy who won a load of medals by being fractionally faster than some others, consistently, but never being fast enough to get close to the fastest times ever, that US keyboard warriors hate for no good reason other than he's not an American white boy?

Stop looking for racist bias. For the overwhelming majority, there isn't any with Farah. For example, Americans seem to love kipchoge and Bekele. Americans dislike Farah presumably because he's insufferable and a proven liar. Is that not enough to dislike him?

Regarding "hating" Farah, there is an extra thread going on right now with several reasons given:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9801759

I did a little trawl back through LR.

This is funny - 2007 and someone was tagging Mo as a doper because he'd become the 4th fastest Brit over 3000m

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1463247&page=3

The hate runs deep!

Enjoyed this thread too

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1680534#1680617

Certainly UKAD and most probably World Athletics, seem more concerned about reputation management of the sport than cleanliness of the sport. A doping finding against a top name (western) athlete would in their view destroy the marketability of the sport and in the case of UK athletics result in loss of public funding, I can't remember the name of the administrator who said this, it might have been Lord Coe, who was head of ethics at FIFA during a period of untrammelled corruption but 'saw nothing', or when he was an underling to the corrupt president at IAAF and again saw nothing, or when David Bedford flagged up concerns about Russian doping and was found to have exhibited a staggering lack of curiosity. So certainly here in the UK, there is no string desire to rock the boat.

I may have a view on whether Mo is clean, but I'm not a professional sports administrator, but there does appear to be enough 'noise' to have another look.

https://twitter.com/MoDoorbell

Also UKAD seem to do cursory investigations or be less than concerned than they should be e.g. there appears to be an issue with UK sports doctors forgetting to record what they are giving athletes, an overabundance of asthmatics at the top level of sport which goes unremarked, or a belief that we brits are honourable and don't cheat.