Lindsey Scherf, too??

Yes, it was probably habitual. When you can get away with something for long enough, you become convinced you'll never get caught. Especially if you've found a working strategy around testing. There are certainly plenty of domestic prize money races on the B- and C-list circuit that still don't bother drug testing. Her sample was collected on 12/26/21, what race would that have been?

Even if you aren't rising high, you can enjoy existing in a certain stratus. Maybe if you've won a national title you can convince yourself that you're just one season more away from a breakthrough. Or you just come to be attached to the status and lifestyle of being an elite athlete. I've seen people hanging on for far longer for much less tangible reward than her lifetime prize money sum.

I'm sorry to hear that Lindsay was apparently doping. I don't know her and don't know any more than the rest of you. A friend of mine who is the top sprinter in his country told me that, at least in the sprints (about which he knows the most), *every* runner we see on the starting line in an olympic finals has been doping - I sure hope he is wrong, and it absolutely does not excuse anyone. Using PEDs is cheating, plain and simple. But, I want to share a positive memory I have of Lindsay from long ago:

I trained for a while with Westchester Road Runners and, during the off season, instead of track workouts, we would do an 8 mile winter run from their running store each wednesday night. There were runners at a wide range of levels (the elite runners wouldn't do this run, and I was in fastest group from non-elite track workouts so would do these runs in the front with a few of my friends). One night, the run begins, and there is a little tiny girl who is new to the group and goes out hard with the fastest men. As you would predict, this was a suicidal pace for her, and she got dropped badly, fairly early in the run. The next week, there she is again but, instead of going out slower based on the previous week, she does the same thing again -- but gets a little further before she is dropped. Week after week she returns, filled with dogged determination, and gets further and further before she gets dropped. It was very young Lindsay - not sure her age, and she might have been small for her age, but it must have looked almost comical to see this tiny girl running with all these fast men. If my memory of it is right, by the end of the winter, she was staying with the front runners, or very close to us, all the way to the end. I remembered thinking she could turn into a very special runner, and remembered her name - and while she never became the best in the world, she did pretty great by my standards. But what I remember as most inspirational was that little girl's fierce determination and persistence!

i find this one particularly depressing for some reason, even though i didn't follow her that much. people need to have backup plans...other things that make them happy. it bums me out that she was determined to be good and didn't care how she got there.

He is probably right (with a few exceptions). We have seen that over 40% dope at world championships. Depending on the event, around 20% make it into the final. Thus lots of dopers aren't good enough to reach the finals.

Eh, idk, its also something you will tell yourself and others as an excuse for why you are not better.

I think because she's not as highly visible as Hassan Mead, but also seems to fall in the same boat (was effectively retired at the time of the positive, according to something I ran across yesterday).

Convicted doper

The data are from a peer-reviewed study; no need to make it personal.

She doesn't coach at Fordham anymore.

It does matter if you don't want the hassle of dealing with informing testers of whereabouts and having them show up to your door randomly for the next four years. Especially if competitive interest in the sport has washed away completely during this process. No thanks, if I were in her shoes I'd probably do the same.

Where does it say anything about an inhaler on the Scherf recent positive case? It says she tripped a positive for an "anabolic agent". Most inhalers are not banned at all by WADA fyi.

What's more concerning is the use of T, HGH etc....even for age groupers and hobbyjoggers...now that's real cheating!

Discussion of the inhaler was in reference to her previous (2007) one year ban. Her excuse for refusing a test was that her TUE application for the inhaler hadn’t been approved, or something like that.

The discussion about inhalers was related to her 2007 case where she was suspended from competition in 2007 due to refusal to take a drug test after not getting her asthma medication TUE processed. Yes, different case, but shows a pattern of either not knowing the rules, skirting them, or not following them.

If you don't need an inhaler but use one anyway, yeah, it's not usually banned by WADA, but it's that grey area that doesn't really match with the spirit of the sport. FYI -- sounds like you're defending the use of inhalers for people who don't really need them.

If Scherf was REALLY trying to skirt the rules back in 2007 that led to her 1-yr suspension, then she must have been really crafty in order to show flaws in the then-TUE system as the CAS appeal summary listed out errors by USADA officials in forwarding into to IAAF for her TUE to be processed AND issues in trying to obtain info from the IAAF website about TUEs on the day the hearing took place. Check out the decision and read parts 9.4 to 9.5 and 9.8 to 9.10. Yes, she still made bad decisions at the end of the day, but it seems it was not her first choice to go that route:

"8.20 USADA further submitted that it found that the errors of the IAAF and
USADA did not excuse Ms. Scherf’s fault in refusing to submit to doping
control, but they did help to create a chain of events which on a balance of
probabilities appear to have significantly mitigated Lindsey Scherf’s fault in
refusing doping control. USADA’s counsel, William Bock in his brief
telephone submission to the hearing, acknowledged that the errors made by
USADA put Lindsey Scherf in a position where she then applied bad
judgement."

The first doping ban was messy, and then appeared to be unfortunate and forgivable. This most recent ban is something else entirely, however.

Agreed. I also wonder how many other elite runners suspected she was doping. Usually competitors can tell something is off. I wonder if they knew.

I heard somewhere she had become an Infantry officer and got her Ranger tab. Rumor and apparently some statistics out there are that the military especial the front lines and special ops hit the roids hard to keep alive as like hey if you can dope to get from point A to point B with 100lbs on your back like 2 seconds faster you stay alive vs getting pumped full of bullets. No idea if this has anything to do with the positive result but she hasn’t run crazy fast in ages and has moved on to other professional pursuits so it just might make more sense. As this result seems like such an unintelligent thing for someone who is so insanely bright.

I could have sworn she said in some interview in late 2020 that running was going to be just a hobby behind some bad ass military pursuits; Ranger school? HALO? Combat diving? Jungle warfare? The Q course? Sapper? Helicopter flying? From what I’ve known and seen of her; if it was hard she wanted to do it. Some of us said she was like a female David Goggins; made her loved by some and disliked by others. Much of the military, especially the infantry, is still the all boys club so, she, not conforming to the status quo discovered that brought her more than a handful of resentment from others. The relevance being she is now focused on missions far beyond those of achievement in sport as her top professional priorities.

Doping for sport vs doping to survive war and fight better on the frontlines for your battle buddies and country and even for heaven sakes to fight off those creepy #metoo’ers lurking in the chain of command (all my military people you know what I’m taking about); they are different apples to oranges morality comparisons. Sport is about a level playing field while war is not. In war you are expected by your units to take every possible advantage you can create to have an edge over the “other side” in order to be effective and in order to get all or your men and women home alive.

My confusion with this is that Scherf was always very diligent about knowing and following the rules; like a human encyclopedia. Believe me people in the military find her very interesting (as people like her don’t just join and put their lives on the line when they have so many other things going for them; this is normally a poor uneducated man’s game) and others asked her all about her athletics even anti doping stuff (and her education too; I mean HARVARD, no one in the military knows anyone who actually went there, West Point maybe but not Harvard). She stood out being a PT stud, not to mentions being a land nav and AR code memorizing savant and impressively being able to explain on a microscopic level how the covid vaccine is actually designed to work to a bunch of thick skulled soldiers and have them actually get it. The one thing she most strongly was in my opinion was insanely NICE to everyone even those who where you know what bags to her; of which there were far too many.

Other military people around her, compliments of looking her up on the internet, asked her about this ban from sport from her 2007 anti doping case. What she said when asked was something to the tune of the USADA TUE coordinator who told SCHERF to ask about drug testing with the Gold Coast Marathon elite athlete coordinator and she also told her “if there isn’t going to be drug testing at the race you don’t have a problem,” a fact that was, to my understanding, never in question.

The Gold Coast marathon elite athlete coordinator told her “NO drug testing was planned” (lying to her) but he later admitted in the CAS hearing that that line of questioning from SCHERF prompted them to call in testing services specifically to test her and misleading her in spite of her stating that USADA told her to make inquiry. The elite athlete coordination stated in the CAS trial when questioned by the CAS arbitrators that he never bothered to make a call directly to USADA to confirm or refute the truth of SCHERF’s inquiries with them before contacting ASADA (Australia’s anti-doping agency) to arrange for SCHERF to be tested. Nice advice USADA; even to someone like myself, if I were the race director/elite athlete coordinator, I too would think this sounds “suspect.”

Her earnest attempts at being diligent landed her in the situation, where she per USADAs guidance, would race with an outstanding/pending TUE application only as long as no drug testing was going to take place at the event. Therefore she said she never had an advance plan for what she would do if she where to be asked to submit to doping control; as she was assured that would not happen at that event.

USADA really dropped the ball on handling her case in 2007; on like 10 different levels from not knowing their own rules (she didn’t actually need an international TUE for this event, her already in place USADA TUE would have been sufficient), to having broken information links for months on end on their website (it was noted on the date of the CAS hearing months later the same web links in question were still down; really not a good look USADA), to failure to process TUE applications in accordance with their own published processing timelines (she submitted the TUE 9 weeks in advance where the promised processing turn around was 3 weeks), and giving really poor advice for an athlete to follow (asking a race director/elite athlete coordinator about drug testing for what proved to be false assurances). But they, USADA, are the established “good fight/clean sport governing body” so you listen. Maybe well intentioned but competent or reliable isn’t supported in any of the case evidence. Some of the facts summarized here: https://www.doping.nl/media/kb/690/CAS 2007_A_1416 WADA & IAAF vs USADA & Lindsey Scherf (OS).pdf

I don’t see her risking her reputation, as she values this greatly, too much so to intentionally dope for sport and ruin what she values more than sport; which is being a good person. She said her biggest hurt from this 2007 blemish on her record was not the ban itself, it was how it hurt those people closest to her and how it made people question her character and integrity.
And she said she would have given up ever having competed or ever doing so in the future in sport if doing so could undo the hurt that this situation had on loved ones and how other’s viewed her character as diminished from this because people negatively pre judged her on the headlines only, which they never read beyond. Seems like the 2007 situation would be just about the strongest experience that one could have to prevent them from actually considering REALLY doping for sport.

I’d like to hear from her as this whole situation seem very mysterious and I don’t think we have faintest idea what the REAL story is. I think there is more to the story. Does anyone else here actually personally know what the real story is or any other factual pieces of it? Any other people know her from running, military or other professional or social circles?

One thing I can say for sure is this is one tough as nails woman, and they don’t come more selfless than SCHERF. I’ve personally seen her not think twice putting herself, her professional self interests, and personal safety on the line to keep other soldiers safe and stick up for them when nobody else would simply because it was the right thing to do. Strong as steel moral compass and as brave as they come.

I scratch my head thinking nothing makes sense with this situation; but I do not question SCHERF’s integrity as it’s something I have seen first hand not just read a headline about. Maybe in writing this I provide some actual facts in the middle of a whole lot of uninformed speculation. But I have to imagine someone else has more insight then me. Just fed up with every one butchering the facts of the past or making up ones about the present and calling a good person a bad one on this non-factual basis.

Me, former high school XC and track runner, continuing hobby jogger and Army Helicopter Pilot. SCHERF if you’re reading this and if you haven’t figured it out already you should know who this is by now. Any other veterans or active servicemen or servicewomen on the message board (not WCAP; we still appreciate your service but it’s not the frontlines; different life or death risk level) have any informed comments about steroid usage in combat arms units?

Seriously the last person I’d expect to ever be associated with the term doping again based on my encounters with her.

What I KNOW is SCHERF is as awesome of a battle buddy and I can find and there isn’t anyone else you would rather have having your back than her; MAN or WOMAN PERIOD.

can't believe you wrote all this word salad out to defend a doper.