New Doping News on Alberto Salazar in Sunday Times

Salazar pushed the envelope but did not exceed it. Looks worse than it is. If USADA had a case they would have charged OP over a year ago. However, OP does not need to be doing this kind of thing with the phenominal group of athletes they have.

olyrun wrote:

Salazar pushed the envelope but did not exceed it...

You have Salazar's word that "he" did not exceed it. ... LOL

Isopure wrote:

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

So the list is:

-androgel

-thyroid meds

-l-carnitine injections

-IV Vitamin D

-a statement by AlSal that you can not be in the top 5 in the world with epo.

Add:

- a missed test because couldn't hear doorbell

- multiple episodes of passing out: post race, post workout in park city, etc

- working with Aden

- meteoric rise after struggling as a pro for years: 4 oly golds, Coe's record beaten (3:28)...coincides with move to Salazar/oregon

- miraculous kick

- elite from 1500m to marathon

- quick runaway from Birmingham outdoor after Salazar scandal

- "forgets" getting injections

- in the running as Olympic medalist and household name in uk as potential drug positive according to Russians

Add:

- being faster to the point of unbeatable at age 33 than at age 26 (an also ran)

Add RE Salazar:

- "testosterone medication"

- coach of testo-drug cheat Slaney

- sending drugs in hollow books -> no respect for the law

- DQ of G. G. against the rules -> no respect for USATF

- instructing his athletes to lie to USADA -> no respect for USADA

But yeah, nothing to see here, right? A good person like Salazar or Farah would never lie or cheat, right? And respect the rules, right?

I am giving Alberto and crew the benefit of the doubt. I talked with Kevin Hanson at the Michigan Indoor State Championships and he said that it is way too early in the process to assume guilt.

Questions for Magness and the Gouchers.

1) Magness - how come you did not come forth with this before publicly? If you believe strongly that this is cheating why were you morally bankrupt enough to make it possible by experimenting on yourself and reporting your findings to Salazar. Seems you want to hold others to a higher moral standard than you do yourself.

2) Gouchers and Magness - why publicly bring things to light that makes Salazar look bad but hid and only go to USADA with things that might implicate you as well. It makes the observer/reader not trust you and wonder what other facts are you not choosing to say. Kara/Adam, what about the big announcement you promised us back 18 month ago that Kara cried about. Did Adam get cold feet about coming forward?

In all seriousness, these accusations would hold more weight if either you had totally went to public with everything from the beginning, or if you had only reported it to the USADA/WADA. This picking and choosing what to tell, and holier than thou attitude, and "just you wait" statements really makes me feel you are more on a personal crusade against Alberto and just trying to clear your own conscious some.

At this point I doubt anyone's opinion about Alberto are changing much, but our opinions of you continue to downward spiral as we learn that you know more than you reveled and that you took part in questionable acts yourself.

You are living in a fantasy world. Steve, Kara, and Adam did come forward and tell USADA everything. It was enough to throw Alberto out of the sport.

Someone got to USADA.

Why do you think that Russia's drug program can be crooked but the United States is above corruption?

How much longer are Farah and Rupp going to stay with Salazar?

They are ruining their reputations via association with a coach that has a reputation for shall we say "stretching the boundaries" of legal drug use.

Fake Doctors get slammed wrote:

To Mr. Obvious - I agree. The board is only going to want to know whether the doctor is prescribing medication without a proper medical reason to do so. Or, if the doctor is artificially creating this need for a prescription. For instance - asking a professional endurance athlete to run to the point of complete physical exhaustion, then immediately running tests to determine whether medication is necessary.....

Ultimately, if I were representing the runner, the defense would be that the runner was told to treat with a doctor and get tested. The runner went. Doctor ran tests and diagnosed me with X and told me to take Y. None of the substances were banned and I was following the doctor's orders. (Keep in mind, for instance, the thyroid medication that put Dr. Brown in the national spotlight a few months ago has not been banned by WADA).

USADA is going to have a tough time popping an athlete on the basis of a medical board's investigation. BUT - it could perhaps be seeking to determine whether an athlete was prescribed certain drugs, never reported it, but should have? Perhaps that might be a violation?

I like that USADA is going to dig deep to get the information and make sure that athletes are competing clean. But at the same time, we also need to be mindful of this turning into an an overly aggressive and unsupervised witch hunt. I cannot speak for where this is at, and I don't ever have to get tested by USADA (and never will). So I would defer to those athletes who do have to stay in touch with USADA and get tested for their opinions about how intrusive USADA can be.

And to Fake Doctors Get Slammed - perhaps the doctor is just prescribing everything to Alberto Salazar and not to any of the athletes? Possible? But that would just get Alberto banned (at best - just because he is receiving all kinds of prescriptions could be explained by his various medical issues and I don't believe that it's automatically punishable for him to receive prescriptions)....

If we are still working off the assumption that this is about the doctor in Houston, then I would be surprised that a doctor who has an active practice would risk it all for a dozen runners or to send it all to one coach. Also, if I were doing something devious with a doctor and trying to avoid a paper trail, then this would be done locally, with prescriptions to strawmen, that get filled and handed off secretly, and not in the formal nature in which it is done (flying down to Houston, registered patients, formal treatment and record keeping, etc....). Leaves too much of a paper trail.

Just a few thoughts - I admit that there are way too many assumptions but with all of this secretive investigating going on, it leaves the mind to wonder.

Salazar has never had a real job and this is why. He has been cheating from day 1.

So, I think you are on the right track on some of this anyway. There are a lot of assumptions behind any of this, but the upshot, as far as I can determine, is that Fancy Bears stole a brief USADA put together for the Texas State Medical Board.:

Here are part of USADA’s findings revealed by The Sunday Times:

USADA has concluded that in so doing [prescribing unnecessary drugs], Dr. Brown engaged in serial violations of professional, medical and ethical obligations to his patients, putting them at increased risk of injury to their health and wellbeing and in jeopardy of losing their athletic eligibility.

Minutes after The Sunday Times’s story was published, USADA flack Ryan Madden tweeted an official statement:

But so far I cannot find the source document. It is not on the Fancy Bears website, and nobody else seems to have released it (or maybe my google-fu is us not strong enough today).

So, anyway, I guess the main point is to clarify that these are two different bodies with very different agendas, powers, and modes of operation.

The medical board could determine Dr. Brown was practicing outside of the standard of care, or that he was not keeping adequate records. State boards tend to give physicians wide latitude in their practices (they are made up of other physicians, who generally don't want their own practices scrutinized). Off label usage of thyroid medication likely would not qualify (off-label usage is very, very widespread and in many cases the primary use of pharmaceuticals). A slightly unusual assessment protocol would also likely not qualify for scrutiny. The idea that they would be interested in investigating a physician for recommending supplements seems very strange to me, as people can pick up supplements without a prescription. Not sure how involved he was in their supplement usage, though.

This just seems pretty thin justification for a medical board to be investigating, so I would hypothesize that it is all based on USADA asking them to. Unless there is a lot more than is known. Given supplements to athletes in which nobody was harmed (I am not seeing great explanation of "athletes health was at risk") and to which the remedy is likely the medical board ordering to physician to take some extra Continuing Medical Education seems like overkill.

USADA has its own processes to follow. Seems like they are trying to leverage to medical board to assist them but not sure how far they will get.

Fake Doctors get slammed wrote:

Mr. Obvious wrote:

State medical boards barely investigate anybody and the rules and regulations on treatment are pretty expansive.

When they do investigate somebody it is almost surely in response to complaints about deaths and serious injuries. The only other investigative body would probably be in response to unusual prescribing patterns (but this is going to be more than a few athletes to raise flags).

I don't think you can count on a medical board to carry USADA's water for them on this one.

State medical boards don't take kindly to people behaving like medical doctors, when they are not. Especially when that behavior involves dispensing other people's prescription drugs, ordering IV drips, injecting dangerous substances.

That's a whole different issue, with a different person. If the Texas State Medical Board is investigating Dr. Brown, it seems likely that is based on not following the standards of care or something like that.

I don't think that same agency could investigate Alberto. People give prescriptions every single day to other people who they know.

If his athletes are having L-Caritine drips, I am guessing that he has a qualified professional administering them. It usually (depending on state, and we have no idea where these actions allegedly took place) only takes a nurse to set up an IV drip and since they are allegedly injecting non-prescription substances, that is probably OK legally (although maybe no USADA/WADA wise).

Nurses set up hangover IVs with vitamins and saline all the time and this does not take a prescription or a doctor overseeing it.

Where do you think all of the L-Carnitine info comes from?

Magness gave it to USADA.

As far as the l-carnitine, it's been reported since the very beginning that Magness was the guinea pig.

See this from 2 years ago:

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2015/03/sunday-times-says-alberto-salzars-group-may-have-inadvertently-broken-anti-doping-rules-with-l-carnitine-injections/

Where do you think that information came from?

So, in reading more of the background stories, this caught my eye as something potentially pretty significant with regard to Dr. Brown:

Dr. Jeffrey Brown, an advisor to the Nike Oregon Project (most famous for being an expert on thyroid medication) “said he had carried out experiments involving L-carnitine injections with permission from the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).”

This was from a Letsrun summary of a Sunday Times article, but I can't read the original article (behind a paywall). So I may be lacking full context or nuance.

This would strike me as pretty significant:

1. Human experimentation is something medical boards take a pretty strict view on. These generally take a review board, extensive documentation, etc. etc. and generally only done at a research hospital. (I think Dr. Brown is in private practice and I can't see that he is associated w/ a med school). I do not know to what degree or extent that would be mitigated by the fact that this is an OTC amino acid would mitigate that. Frankly it is somewhat surprising that a doctor would admit to carrying out experiments, as that is a pretty bright line, generally.

2. He said he was doing that with permission from USADA. I've argued on here before that USADA didn't really have any jurisdiction over Dr. Brown, but this is complicating that view. I'm not sure what authority USADA has to give permission to experiment with OTC amino acids. They certainly are not a review board. but Dr. Brown may have placed himself in some sort of relationships with USADA here.

Our article #2 on the more detailed Sunday Times article is out. Some of the details have been mentioned on this thread but not all of them. Article here http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/02/leaked-usada-report-alberto-salazar-dr-brown-used-risky-procedures-prescriptions-medications-increase-testosterone-boost-performance/

People doing things legally do not resort to:

Alberto Salazar and Galen Rupp “Resisted, Delayed” and “Only Partially and Selectively Responded” to USADA’s Requests for Information

... as noted in the last paragraph of LRC article #2.

This is probably state of play, doping on grey area, OTC non-banned supplements and vitamins. Remember the thread last year on Kenya by Dutch tv and European runners left vit-b vials etc in the motel bin.

I'm willing to bet that if there is anything to be gained from actovegin Salazar will be utilizing it.

So why does USADA allow ANY amount of L-Carnitine to be injected into an athlete? Why would anyone do that unless a physician orders it? And why would a physician order an L-Carnitine drip?

None of it makes sense wrote:

Why would anyone do that unless a physician orders it? And why would a physician order an L-Carnitine drip?

Some people do it for hangovers:

Sometimes with a doctor and sometimes without.