Salazar, Farah, talk about use of L-carnitine, a legal supplement with 11% performance gains

Exactly. It's a non-story.

Letsrun is the e-equivalent of a grocery store rag magazine for runners. Its certainly not a place to go for well-informed/researched news or scientific evidence, and this recent toss is a prime example of why that's the case. The only issue this thread raises for me is why the moderators/creators don't use this forum to raise the sport rather than to spread false information or purposely slant things in such a way that encourages people to tear people/organizations down. Rather than this l-carnitine non-story people should be questioning the value of this immature, uniformed, gossip-laden nature of this forum.

It is an issue only because of this absurd thread. Someone told me about the assumptions being made on here and, in my view, people should be aware of letsrun's rag magazine nature. I'm sure people are aware of this but choose to partake anyway even if they are completely uneducated with respect to the topic. Forums like this that let names be wiped all over the floor constantly (& with no reason) do nothing but harm the sport. What if it were you who were publicly being thrown under the bus? Way to go moderators. Congratulations.

I haven't read this thread, but I did read the article.

I actually don't have a problem at all with the ethics of what happened. 1. Because its legal. 2. It appears it was being tested out to see if it helped. 3. It's legal 4. It's legal (did I mention it's legal?)

And to the comment that it looks suspicious for a coach who claims that iron and amino acids are all one needs, I say bah!! I don't see an ongoing effort to use. It was isolated across a couple purchases and I would expect that in a trial. It wasn't part of the known and ongoing use of the iron and amino acids, so there is no reason to pretend that experimental uses should be included in that set of comments until it is known that the new supplement wil be included on a regular basis. Until then, it's experimental....and legal

How do you apply for the job of NOP shill? Is there somewhere I should be volunteering first, or is there just a job posting out there that I should be sending a resume to? Eitherway, I'll gladly take your place one day when you need to pass the torch.

Joe Mama wrote:

How do you apply for the job of NOP shill? Is there somewhere I should be volunteering first, or is there just a job posting out there that I should be sending a resume to? Eitherway, I'll gladly take your place one day when you need to pass the torch.

Tabloid typed, "someone told me about the assumptions being made on here..."

Tabloid must be non-lrc regular who works with someone who told him (paid him) to come on lrc and refute any, and all, claims about NOP. Okay, that really helps the NOP defensive position.

Classic Lance... Attack the messenger, not the message... Classic Nike protocol

Actually he ordered it a month BEFORE the paper was published. Paper is in the Feb issue. Order was in January according to Sunday Times.

Now it's possible the paper gets leaked before hand or the journal gets mailed before its official date.

Are you referencing our story on the homepage? I think it is very balanced and we gave the story some context. The Sunday Times a respectable paper in London devoted 2 stories to this. It was on the front page up top on their website. Not sure where it was in the print paper.

wejo wrote:

Mo Interesting wrote:

No one has yet mentioned something that is very interesting: Alberto Salazar learned about L-carnitine in very short order after the 2011 research paper was published, and he very quickly placed a very large purchase order. Someone must have brought the paper up to Salazar before it was published. It doesn't make sense that he had the time to vet the paper himself.

Actually he ordered it a month BEFORE the paper was published. Paper is in the Feb issue. Order was in January according to Sunday Times.

Now it's possible the paper gets leaked before hand or the journal gets mailed before its official date.

Salazar order the stuff just weeks after the paper was published online. The paper was posted online more than one month before the print version. The online version was published on Jan 4, 2011. The print version was dated Feb 15, 2011.

Oh, and peer reviewers get pre-published versions of papers to comment on months before the final version is published. The final version is often revised to address, or ignore, reviewer comments.

Reading an article before it's "published" is often not a big deal

There are sites like arxiv.org where scientists can post pre-published articles and share results before anyone else can take credit (so reviewers can't copy, or to beat out other researchers making similar discoveries). Journals and conferences pre-date the web, and the time between when an article is submitted and accepted, and then the time from when an article is accepted to published, can take a while, often several months to over a year in some cases. On the day after big conference submission deadlines, for example, a number of high quality papers get posted by the authors. Granted, these articles are not peer-reviewed.

Egregious claims like above lend credence to this statement

It is possible for a research paper to have a publication date that does not accurately represent when the paper was truly published. Think of it as getting your April Track & Field News in March or even late February. It is also often the case that small slices of the final paper are sometimes released or shared prior to the full, published paper. That being said, there were other scholarly articles published before 2011 on the potential performance enhancements of l-carnitine. Mixed bag by the way...On the second point, your story on the homepage started as balanced and I was initially pleased that you took the time to write it, but then it dilapidated quickly from there. I found two things troubling. One was how you referenced an anonymous message board poster, Angry Willy, and his assertion that there is a potential link between Rupp's known and reported medical thyroid issue with l-carnitine supplementation. Whether or not this is true, a balanced reporter would have obtained a medical expert to review the published paper (and how it relates to Rupp's particular medical issue) rather than relying on Angry Willy to do the leg work for you. That part was careless.Secondly, your time line was inconclusive. If Salazar said they used the legal supplement in 2011 and 2012 and realized it didn't work, why is it hard to believe him in 2013 when he told The Telegraph, “We don’t take that much stuff and everything that Mo takes is from UK Athletics. None of our athletes are on any sports-specific supplement other than beta alanine, which is an amino acid. Other than that, it’s iron, vitamin D and that’s it. You don’t really need anything else.”You claim your story was valid because the London Sunday Times ran a story about it. Last time I checked, all 27 comments on the Times website (regarding the two stories) lambasted the Times for running such a nonsensical piece of rubbish. Words like "ashamed," "shocked," and "pointless" were directed at the Times for running such gossip non-story. I encourage you to read the comments section. These stories will likely turn out to be an embarrassment for the Sunday Times and they won't approach the subject with a ten foot pole again. Lastly, Weldon, you ran a headline our your homepage accusing Salazar that he asked his athletes to lie to USADA and WADA. This was gross, negligent error on your part - simply because you failed to read the Times story correctly and were swayed by another anonymous poster on your message board. Since then, you rightly issued a correction - but you should have issued an apology to Salazar. This was a missed opportunity for Letsrun to bring clarity and fairness to an interesting issue.

Please accept my apologies for the missing quotation marks and random acts of poor grammar on my post above. Trying to make dinner and post on Letsrun at the same time! Dangerous...

Nike never let's you rest, huh? You have to admit, there's a bit of irony when an anonymous poster calls someone out using their first name (I suppose it's present here too). Anyways, the fact wejo responded to the previous poster, who called the site a rag, does make me wonder if he noticed the IP address was coming from somewhere in Portland, just a thought... Carry on

Fan of everyone wrote:

You worry too much.

Without a story there is no interest. This is why the Brojos turn everything into a "scandal". More scandal turns into more posts, more clicks, more revenue.

The Comments under the article on The British Site illustrate exactly what LetsRun is all about. On the British site you have people reading the story and then deciding the story is a non story. They took legal supplements...what's the point... On LetsRun you have "people" coming in just to attack and hate.

Schumacher8890 wrote:

You also worry to much.

One of the quotes said "but saw no benefit and actually gained weight "

So is this supplement for weight loss or performance? Yeah, weight loss is tied to performance.

Not related, but do elites do liposuction for weight loss?

This is why the Brojos turn everything into a "scandal"

Read this: Your "counter-argument" is #3 on the list: