accidentalorsomething wrote:
I feel bad for Allie. She should be able to compete against people at places like Western States. She should be able to compete and not be listed as a doper by the journalistic sites such as irunfar.com.
I've always hated irunfar's policy to list any positives tests whenever a runner is mentioned for exactly this kind of situation. I think their policy is to not interview any those athletes too. Their intention is to give a scarlet letter to cheaters. However, their application gives black marks to people who have no intention to cheat and makes them look petty.
If the relevant antidoping agency doesn't think you intended to cheat and lets you off (Maude Mathys for pregnancy drug) or gives you a light sentence because they didn't think you intended to cheat, that should be the best objective evidence that there was no intent to cheat. My suggestion to them (which I could have made years ago) would be to revise their policy to only highlight the positives of those intentionally cheating, which isn't that hard to determine. They are the ones with 2/4 year bans.
From a statistical perspective, antidoping controls are always going to catch some percentage of people who have zero intention to cheat. It does not serve the antidoping "movement", if you can call it that, to shun those people who get caught up in it unintentionally. It's a form of extended harrassment.
As a form of protest, I think I'll write up short, clarifying comments about some no-intention-to-cheat-but-tested-positive athletes that I can copy-paste into irunfar article comments when they do their scarlet letter thing. It would be just for when I see it, since I probably miss 85% of it.