::: Salazar + Altitude House = Blood Thickening? :::

Sorry formerNCAAtrackster, you're in the wrong place for such inquiries. Losers like "looking for a point" need to be "looking for a clue" instead of overusing the word "check" whenever they "think" they've just had an illusive stroke of brilliance.

I can see how a coach could theoretically "experiment" on himself or his athletes in the manner which you seem to be alluding. And this isn't to say that the "experimentation" is necessarily illegal at all. Perhaps it involves the (dangerous?) adjusting of altitude simulation levels.

As far as something more nefarious going on, think about it: the coach isn't competing. Who's going to test him? I'm by no means saying that I think Salazar would do such a thing, but I can see how someone "could." Basically, monitor their own blood levels to see what achieves a desired result.

Anyway, it's kind of a crapshoot on here, depending on the day, for intellectually curious posts such as yours. Hope you get some worthy feedback.

My granddad, had 3 brothers and 2 sisters. They all died before they turned 50, because of heart problems. He's still, out of what seems like luck, alive.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2007-07-02-3910860095_x.htm

I don't know if you're trying to make this bigger or complicated than it is. But, like Alberto says in the article, "family history," what is bigger or more complicated than genetics?

+ prozac, other legal drugs and medicine, creatine and other suppliments, hypertension and others can add up to a lot.

No, I asked a question in that regard and you answered it. Then I explained why I asked it. I consider that part of the matter closed.

Just as you weren't accusing Salazar. Until you did.

Any time Galen competes in a high-level competition or frankly anytime WADA/USADA feels necessary, he will be tested. If he tests positive for anything, he'll be suspended. Such measures are well established.

No, actually nothing would show up.

So you are not accusing him of blood doping, you are just accusing him of taking illegal substances. 20 years after his career is over. Again, what is the basis for your accusation?

It is? Proven? Really? I must admit that is news to me! I mean, I know he's willing to put his body through hell in a race but I had no idea it was proven he was willing to try illegal substances.

Clearly you have access to some smoking that we do not. Can you point us to some evidence of his willingness to try illegal substances?

If you cannot test to see if something is going to help your performance in running, what is the point of testing it. Do you think he's conjuring up substances in a lab somewhere and wondering if it will KILL someone?

You understand that they have REAL labs and real doctors for that sort of stuff, right?

No. Do you think it really could?

Now hold it a second. You just told us that it was PROVEN Salazar would do anything. Just a second ago you said it was proven. Now you're telling me it isn't proven and this is just your hunch. Please, which is it?

You need to get your story straight here, I think

He had a heart attack. They put in a stent to unclog the artery. The artery was clogged. With plaque. Is it really too difficult to figure out what the cause is?

Perhaps should urge them to stay away from saturated fats.

No it really isn't. He's a 48 year old man who had a heart attack decades after his career was over. After all those years, it's pretty much absurd to think that its a result of participation in the sport. In the very least, it is orders of magnitude more reasonable to think he just didn't watch his blood cholesterol very closely.

That's nice but until you show us how it is "proven", there is no evidence whatsoever that Salazar has done any such thing.

you're still here?

Dear "Looking for a Point":

I have stated what my motivations are in starting this conversation/thread. I was curious if you could clarify to us how you have come to have such a vested interest in defending Alberto Salazar? I'm not sure if you simply take pleasure in arguing on forums, if your livelihood is dependent upon his innocence, or if you are even Alberto himself!? I know that if I were a former doper, I would be burdened w/ guilt and obsessed with the fact that each day, more and more secrets get revealed on the internet. I'd be paranoid that those secrets would get out and could spread faster than I could manage them. I'd be googling my name constantly and trying my best to "battle away" at any and all statements made that might reveal the truth.

Your tone reminds me of a Tom Tomorrow "This Modern World" satirical cartoon. It's clever and well done with the quoting, bold fonts, and one liner rebuttals, but you are continually choosing to write before you should first read completely, then think for a moment. Your motivation to reply is revealing your unwillingness to consider someone else's perspective and it makes you come off suspicious, almost borderline foolish.

Then, when I think a bit longer, something else seems familiar to me about the way you present yourself. I think it reminds me of the right wing tactic used in the media to attempt to disprove "global warming". The idea is to plant a seed of doubt amongst the general public and a feeling that the "Scientific Community" doesn't agree with itself that global warming is real! This has been dis-proven but that doesn't mean that ill-informed opinions cease to be distributed.

The reality is that I may be completely wrong here with my curiosity, but there is indeed a topic found within this thread that is worthy of further discussion. It would be really helpful if the following could be answered:

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"Was Alberto Salazar's blood tested when he was admitted to the hospital for his heart attack? If so, what were his blood levels? Were there any traces of performance enhancing substances?"

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Considering the context of his profession, as well as his relationship with many impressionable athletic youth, I think that it is appropriate to ask these questions and expect an answer.

preposterous. salazar doesn't live, or spend time, at the altitude house. more likely is a heredity factor.

And then you have turned around and contradicted them. And contradicted them again. I'm looking for one story and I see several. First you are not making accusations. Then you are. First it's speculation. Then things are "proven". Then it's all a hunch.

I don't care who it is. From everything I have heard, Alberto Salazar is a first class prick on a personal level. But big accusations demand big proof. I see none.

You said it was proven that Alberto Salazar will do anything to succeed including take illegal drugs, but when asked for you proof, you show none. And if it is not proven, then what we have is that you don't like Alberto Salazar. I don't like him either. Doesn't mean his heart attack is a sign of drugs from 20 years ago.

Considering the serious nature of the accusations you have made, I think it is appropriate to ask you to supply the proof you referred to and to expect it to be supplied.

Oh but I'm not trying to disprove a thing. You are the one who spoke about proof. So far, all we have is your suspicions. I just want to see the proof you spoke of. Please, educate us.

Just one more time I want you confirm this. You actually believe that a 48 year old man with a wife and children who has not competed for many years is going to somehow "test" new drugs? I mean, we already know that EPO works so it wouldn't be that. No we would have to believe that Salazar would be willing to take some new, experimental drug himself -- even though it would not show him any benefit since he is NOT COMPETING. And then, this 48 year old is going to take these drugs an inject them into some kid and just "see what happens". Is that it?

A 48 year old man had a heart attack and got a stent. Go look up Occam's Razor.

In the very least, I think you should probably back away from from the whole "I'm concerned for impressionable athletic youth" thing. Tactically speaking, it rings a little hollow.

Ok, as I recall, when I originally posted my questions, I believe i was asking for more information to learn more about his health issue and whether it could be a side effect of being an elite athlete, or potentially related to residual effects of drugs. I have not personally tested his blood. I have not seen his blood tests from his recent hospital visit. If I had that info, why would I be asking if anyone else knows?

I'm sure I am full of contradictions and have confused you by things I have written. I imagine that this whole conversation has kind of evolved in many directions and maybe that's the problem.

Regarding whether it has been proven that he is willing to pursue better performances at all costs, you could just simply re-read that wired.com article I posted in my original note. I'm not going to elaborate further because I don't need to, it's all spelled out there. I didn't write it. It's just info that is published and out in the open. I'm just reading it and wondering.... hmm... what if???

Your postings are essentially like chaff. It is meant to distract from the objective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_

(radar_countermeasure)

It's a tactic that is commonly used on forum threads and the way it works is eventually one person will grow bored with the useless banter. We're pretty much there. I don't really have any more info. Only speculation and curiosity. I was hoping someone else might have more insight. Maybe something new besides the defensive points you have made, that don't necessarily disprove any speculation anyways.

Do YOU have access to Salazar's blood profiles? I guess not. Do you know anything more about his hospital visit than has been published on the usatoday website? No? Great. Maybe then you're not the person I'm looking for answers from. Talk to you later! Take care! Or, maybe more likely, see you in your next rebuttal quote posting.

The idea that no one would question his motives, or that it would seem udderly preposterous is the perfect guise to hide behind while testing doping products. Certainly I am not assuming that he is absolutely guilty, because I don't have all the info. But don't be a fool. Ever heard of Tyler Hamilton and his loving relationship with his poor, sick dog "Tugboat"? Who would ever think that someone so sensitive and caring and honest would ever do something unethical. Turns out, he had an established relationship with Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Landis and his Testosterone patch? Who would dope while in such a heated spotlight? Hmmm.

You are naive to think that doping isn't and hasn't been happening in high school and collegiate athletics. These young and impressionable kids are first exposed to these ideas by the people they are putting their trust in the most. The trainers. I know that my team doctor sure didn't practice good medical standards when I was competing for the UofO. And I learned an important lesson from that. I also learned that having good individual treatment is critical to success and I'm thankful for having been exposed to that level of sports.

Why don’t you post using your real name, you gutless piece of crap? At least disguise your writing style. You are a plague on this board. Do everyone a favor and get a life outside of cyberspace. Maybe go out on the K&T to see if you can still actually run.

Oh no you don't. You most definitely need to. You made it clear that Salazar was willing to do anything to improve performance. You said it was PROVEN. You made it clear that involved taking illegal performance enhancing drugs. Yet there is no such assertion in the Wired.com article. No such thing is spelled out there. Unless you want to show us. Come on. It's all there, right? Show us.

Your postings are essentially like trolling. The objective is to smear the name of Alberto Salazar with innuendo, not fact.

Innuendo is a tactic used just about everywhere to accuse someone of a crime without actually coming out and saying the words. So if someone calls you out on it, you get to claim, "Oh I never said that." It is the cowards way of accusation. "Hey, I would like to know if Alberto Salazar is injecting teenagers with illegal drugs. Now, of course I am not SAYING that, oh no. Nosirree. I just want to know if he is."

Please.

The very idea is to plant the seed in people's minds. So that you can then say, "People are talking about it," as if that were some sort of evidence.

You didn't have any info to begin with.

Oh that's just f***ing priceless. Now I need to disprove your ridiculous speculation? Sorry kiddo.

It works like this: If you make an accusation that someone is not only taking drugs but injecting them into kids it is up to you to back it up with something more than "Hmmmmm I wonder".

If you make an accusation that someone is willing to do ANYTHING to improve performance -- if you tell us it is PROVEN -- then it is up to you supply that proof.

What is even more UTTERLY (no cows involved) preposterous is the idea that someone would identify his motives as heinous with not a shred of proof.

You paint ridiculous a scenario of Dr Evil that belongs back in the Austin Powers movie it came from.

You throw out the most ridiculous accusations of a public figure from behind an anonymous handle with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but your own navel-gazing to back it up. And if nobody supplies you with the "secret information" you need? Well they must be covering up, right? All the while, you never have to tell anyone who you are. It's all to protect your secret identity, crusading for the children. Always for the children.

Spare me.

Are you people really this DUMB??

Why would he live in the altitude house? I mean, give me ONE reason why he would do that?

He himself has stated that his family has a history of heart disease.

Am i saying thaat he may have had a history of past drug use? I frankly dont know.

But to suggest that he is currently living in an altitude house with his athletes is beyond dumb.

You're a f***ing saint for putting up with all this jackoff's bullshit.

Tommy2Nuts wrote:

He himself has stated that his family has a history of heart disease.

and mental illness.

You´re missing a few things:

1. If you use blood doping and then quit using it, your blood value returns to normal. Your Hb value does not stay elevated for decades!

2. Track&Field athletes are tested just as much as cyclists. Carolina Kluft is usually tested at least 20 times every year.

The altitude house doesn't even exist anymore, nor did Salazar ever live there. I don't think (but am not 100% sure) that EPO even existed in say 80-82 when Salazar was at his peak. Maybe he took some kind of performance enhancers during his career, maybe he didn't, I have no idea. If those have some cause and effect relationship with the specific problem Salazar had with his heart, then the discussion has at least some speculative value. However, I fail to see the relevancy of the altitude house or Rupp's blood level on Salazar having a heart attack in 2007.

Genetics,stress,exercise ,diet all contribute to ones vascular disease.

High ldl to low hdl colestrol will cause occluded arteries and veins. A " heart incedent, or brain incedent(stroke) will result.

A thorasic plumer will repair blocked lines with bypass or stints.

Stress reduction, diet and exercse will reduce the potential for clogged lines.

Altitude houses seem to be a non contributer; however, no good studies, from my understanding exist.

American culture seem to have most of the potent variables toward vasculair issues.

We are a stressed out, fast food, overweight, passive culture.

Heart desease is the single most cause of prematture death.

One's lifestyle can change the outcome.

I would think altitude homes are a red herring.

Even athltets are not immune. Alberto, gd bless him may have

stress related, genitic issues.

He will be fine, I'm sure; however he may need to evaluate his lifestyle or next time his life may end prematturely.

Most victoms do change their variables. Stress, not altitude homes will kill people.

" SALAZAR is up-front about his willingness to try almost anything in the name of improving performance. To some, his training methods reek of desperation. But he figures that embracing unorthodox - and as-yet unproven - technologies may in the end give his athletes an edge. So why not try? "As you improve, you have less room for improvement," he says, sitting with Browne and Johnson on a couch in the altitude house. "That's when you really start adding things. You don't leave any stone unturned." "

" He hopes that by fall his athletes will be so much faster that they'll accept any device he introduces. "

Regarding hypobaric chambers...

" there's no science to back up the claims. "You read the promotional literature, and it tells you the chambers do everything," says Salazar. "Hey, they certainly won't hurt you."

And that, in a nutshell, captures Salazar's I'll-try-anything enthusiasm. Not everyone in the running community shares it. "

" But Salazar won't stray from his innovate-or-bust training formula. "The plan remains doing whatever is necessary to create winners. We'll think out of the box, not just for the sake of being different but to find what really works," says the coach. "

" On a great day, an elite 10,000-meter runner competing in a pressure-packed international competition can maybe take a double-digit chunk out of his time. Reducing one's mark by 30 seconds, however, borders on the unnatural - and perhaps Browne's feat was exactly that. His red blood cell count, measured before traveling to the Bay Area, was 11 percent higher than it was the day he joined the team. While Browne can't quantify how much the altitude house contributed to his performance, he knows one thing: He didn't run like this before the project. "

---------------------------------------

Like I said, I didn't write the article, I READ it. I don't have his blood samples or profiles, I am curious to see them.

Ultimately, it comes down to WHO gains more financially from the sacrifices of the athlete? Is it Alberto Salazar? Nike? Why would so much money be poured into such an endeavor? To what extents will a trainer go in order to get his athletes to break new records and what happens to the athletes that are left in his wake?

There are still not answers to the questions of what was in Alberto Salazar's blood when he had his heart attack.

"Looking for a point": I believe YOU have placed Alberto Salazar's name in the same sentence with "ILLEGAL DOPING" practices more than I actually have. If you are so concerned with not spreading innuendo, why do you keep doing so, creating word associations that will forever be searchable via google? Aren't YOU actually contributing to the badmouthing of his reputation?

Why have you not yet clarified what it is that you gain from defending Alberto Salazar? What is YOUR relationship to the Oregon Project? What are your PR's? Why have you not given any reason for wasting so much time trolling the internet looking for a point? Is that your hobby? Is that fulfilling?

What kind of doping practices have YOU undergone and what level of guilt do YOU have that keeps you here?

Still waiting for the part where he's proven to be willing to try things that are illegal.

That's because there's still no question about them to begin with except in your little mind. The house no longer exists. Salazar never lived there in the first place. The effects on hematocrit of EPO are already known and would never need to be tested in the first place. They don't put in stents to clear up a high hematocrit count. They put them in to clear up plaque-clogged arteries.

Oh, so it has to be in the same sentence for it to be an accusation? You just put it in sentences next to each other so nobody would know. Oh my you are so clever. Shhhh. Don't worry. I won't tell anyone that you said... well all of the following, (emphasis added):

There's that innuendo. You never actually SAID he was using illegal drugs, did you? Nope, you just "want to know" because you are concerned. For the children. Always the children.

OK now you are really confusing me. First I am badmouthing him and then I am defending him? Which is it? Please make up your mind.

I don't see much that I could gain by "defending" Salazar see except high blood pressure. Fortunately I don't see myself as defending Alberto Salazar at all. I see myself as pointing out a troll on the internet who is obviously badmouthing him in the guise of being concerned for the young athletes of today. What a crock.

My relationship? LOL! I have no more connection to the (now defunct) Oregon Project than I suspect you do to the University of Oregon or elite cycling. Which is to say. None.

Marathon: 2:42. Half Marathon: 1:15. Unfortunately, no performance-enhancing drug in the world are going to make me elite. I did win a couple of gift certificates at some local 5ks last year. You might want to order blood tests for me.

I thought it was pretty clear. You are wasting OUR time with the innuendo. I just want to see the proof you were talking about. And here we are 3 pages and countless posts later and still there is none.

Well I drank a lot of caffeine. Does that count?

Still waiting for the "proof". Shall we assume it is never coming?

Thanks for putting all my statements together like that, it makes it easier to read them all instead of picking through your blabber. You have done a great job with your cut and paste skills. Each time you have chosen one of my quotes, you have not read it the way it was intended. It's like when someone talks over another person, telling them what they are saying. The lips are moving, but the ears and brain are not.

It is a curiosity of mine, not an accusation. Accusations specifically spell out what is a concern w/ concrete proof. Anything else is obviously purely a just a question or a "hmm, I wonder" statement. I have never said Alberto Salazar HAS TAKEN illegal substances, nor have I said that he has specifically GIVEN illegal substances to any of the athletes he trains. If I was making an accusation, why would this be the forum? I was asking for more information to understand what really happened. I have asked for more information to confirm that he IS NOT doing anything harmful with a healthy level of skepticism. And you DON'T have anything further to contribute, only your feeble attempts to deconstruct my thoughts and add your own perspective on top of them. You haven't added anything substantial to the conversation to disprove anything, just fixated on tearing down my curiosity as if I were loaded up w/ hard evidence or making substantiated claims.

You've jumped to as many conclusions as I have, but we're still no further along. How 'bout that?

Maybe you are bitter about your lack of talent in the competitive running venue? Is this the only thing you have left? (I picked on that item because you put it out there as if it were important to you. I expect an reaction, "little miss looking for a point".

You're wrong about the UO stuff. I actually used to spend a fair share of time training w/ Karl Keska and have played way more video games with the guy than I'd like to admit. The guy is a freak of nature. You don't have a clue about my cycling and that doesn't bother me one bit. :)

For me, I guess I am always looking for any proof out there that training at the elite level is not what causes athletes to keel over at an early age. If it can be proven that someone had health issues as a side effect of crossing the ethical line and using bad things, that further reinforces the logic that doping is bad, and that sports are GOOD. I do believe sports are good, but that there is a crossing point at the elite level where they become harmful. Whether that is psychological or physiological, that is what other experts are paid to research. Not me. I'm just asking the questions of those that are INFORMED. I don't feel this includes you. Your competency seems to only apply to your ability to deconstruct someones post and build it up to appear like you are belittling them with your brilliance. The thing is that the light you paint them in is not the same light that they are originally presented under.

You might have a career potential here working in the legal world of athlete defense. With all the doping scandals, the dirty athletes will need folks like you to stand up for them at all costs and you can profit from it! Great work! This is like an informal intership and you're gaining such valuable experience! You should print this out and share it at your next job interview. I'm sure you'll go far in life, much further than the low benchmarks you achieved on your feet.

Touché. Burn. Ssssssssssss.