Major USADA screw up over L-Carnetine/NOP issue

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  • randallIndiana
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:04pm CDT
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    The London Times just released another story on the L-Carneting/NOP saga. It looks like USADA told Alberto in December 2011 that the L Carnetine injections were ok up to 50ml, but WADA is saying this wasn’t the case until January of 2012. Now WADA is investigating and looks like NOP may take the fall...


    THE World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) has offered to examine evidence that an athlete within Mo Farah’s American training camp unwittingly broke its rules by receiving injections of a legal supplement only months before the London Olympics.

    Leaked emails and “top secret” performance data obtained by The Sunday Times indicates that in late 2011 Alvina Begay...

    editor's note: Please do not post full articles on our site. The article is behind a Times paywall here. You can read an LRC synopsis of the article here

    More quotes from article: "Usada told Salazar that injections of less than 50ml over a six-hour period were permitted. The advice was based on a Wada document dated September 2011, which is understood not to have been formally ratified. Within hours of being sent the reply by Usada, Salazar emailed several members of his team. “We will have to try the ‘less than 50ml L-carnitine infusion’,” he wrote. In an email to Begay, Salazar said that he expected her and Dathan Ritzenhein, a long-distance runner in the Nike Oregon Project, to see “a two to three-minute advantage” when the L-carnitine supplement was used in conjunction with a sodium drink. Ritzenhein said: “I have complied with all Wada rules, including my use of L-carnitine, which I tried but it did not provide any benefit so I stopped using it.”

    You can read an LRC synopsis of the article here
  • road rashed
    registered
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:10pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    Of course Rupp and Farah were injecting. They won medals. That's the reason for the investigation. The truth will come out. Mo will lie to the end.
  • Ganondorf
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:10pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    Link?
  • So NOP...
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:14pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    So NOP doped, and gets to keep their friggin medals. What a fine day it is...cheaters win.
  • So NOP...
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:15pm CDT
    re: Ganondorf
    Forum Index
    Too lazy to find it yourself?

    http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Health/article1537354.ece
  • randallIndiana
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:20pm CDT
    re: So NOP...
    Forum Index
    Did you read the story? It says Alvina Begay (Who is that?) took the Carnetine by injection in December, Not Mo or Galen who won friggin medals.
  • Guinea the Pig
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:31pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    Alvina Begay was obviously a NOP Guinea Pig.
  • Goodness, oh my
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:32pm CDT
    re: So NOP...
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    So a legal supplement that a member(s) of the NOP allegedly took in an illegal way - two weeks before the whole thing would have been entirely legal?

    Cut the crap about doping. It's an amino acid. The USADA scientist that misinformed the NOP should be fired on the spot and USADA should immediately issue an apology. Who are American athletes supposed to go to if they can't count on USADA to give them the right information? Disturbing.

    So NOP... wrote:

    So NOP doped, and gets to keep their friggin medals. What a fine day it is...cheaters win.
  • Randy Oldman
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:34pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    If it improves performance by 11% we should see a sub 24 10K soon.
  • Neva Legal
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:35pm CDT
    re: Goodness, oh my
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    Goodness, oh my wrote:
    So a legal supplement that a member(s) of the NOP allegedly took in an illegal way - two weeks before the whole thing would have been entirely legal?

    Cut the crap about doping. It's an amino acid. The USADA scientist that misinformed the NOP should be fired on the spot and USADA should immediately issue an apology. Who are American athletes supposed to go to if they can't count on USADA to give them the right information? Disturbing.

    You do not seem to be aware the L-Carnetine is NOT listed as "legal" by WADA. It is not listed at all, meaning it is subject to banning if WADA decides that someone took it in an attempt to enhance performance.
  • 11% work output
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:40pm CDT
    re: Randy Oldman
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    The 11% is work output, and not time improvement.
  • A Duck
    registered
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 9:47pm CDT
    re: Randy Oldman
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    Randy Oldman wrote:

    If it improves performance by 11% we should see a sub 24 10K soon.

    The claims of 11% improvement from an amino acid would be the first tip that the study/studies or claims by the manufacturer were whack.

    Per Dirk Pearkson and Sandy Shaw's books on supplements and health and life extension, I used to take various amino acids for recovery, and appetite suppression / to keep weight on / build muscle.

    Ate like a fiend for a month, after a badly sprained ankle, couldn't run... And managed to not pork up.

    Later I read that taking amino acids, individual ones in dietary form were likely useless as they'd just "collaborate" with other amino acids in one's food and just become protein and have no special or isolating effect. --No idea if that is correct. Could explain the need for injections.

    Lots of athletes used to get vitamin b injections. Is that doping?
  • dsfadsfds
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 10:00pm CDT
    re: A Duck
    Forum Index
    A Duck wrote:

    Lots of athletes used to get vitamin b injections. Is that doping?

    According to WADA rules, yes, in some circumstances it is.
  • Sleepless scientist
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 10:19pm CDT
    re: dsfadsfds
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    I'm not so sure about that statement. When is a b12 injection under the legal dose of 50 ml illegal? Perhaps I'm clueless on that.

    Nevertheless, we can go around and around on whether l carnitine is doping like EPO or whether it is the same as taking beta alanine or drinking Gatorade in a marathon. People draw their lines on how it suits them. It's been debated tirelessly on the other thread about the NOP and carnitine.

    The story to me right now is the issue of USADA misleading the NOP.

    A Duck wrote:

    Lots of athletes used to get vitamin b injections. Is that doping?

    According to WADA rules, yes, in some circumstances it is.[/quote]
  • Coach D
    registered
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 10:22pm CDT
    re: dsfadsfds
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    Live by the sword....

    Even assuming they weren't doing stuff like the testosterone microdosing and HGH that John Smith thought that Victor Conte was doing, if you play these as-close-to-cheating-that-you-can-get-away-with games, sooner or later somebody's going to make a mistake (Ben Johnson, Justin Gatlin, Trevor Graham) and you're going to get burned. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch, unless it was the Jamaicans (again).

    I hope that out of one of these minor mistakes,Travis Tygart gets a chance to put Steve Magness on the stand (so the NDA he signed no longer applies) to testify about what was REALLY going on there.
  • A few musings after reading
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 10:56pm CDT
    re: coach d
    Forum Index
    1) alvina Begay might be one of the worst names I've ever heard
    2) an infusion (quotedword used by Salazar in article) and injection are two significantly different means of administration. Infusion is directly into a vein (think iv), and an injection is just given subdermal (under the skin) or intramuscular (think insulin shot or flu shot)
    3) this dr brown guy in Houston might be the American version of Ferrari
    4) people seem to forget that Salazar was on victor conte's "list"
  • cbenson4
    registered
    5 years ago 03/28/2015 11:21pm CDT
    re: randallIndiana
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    I understand that they're trying to improve as much as possible... but really, it seems like they are just forcing these unnatural things way too hard.

    Injections to boost performance just sounds like cheating no matter what you're using. What ever happened to the good ole days when everyone just trained hard to get better results? Guess that's in the past.
  • HillaryRC
    5 years ago 03/29/2015 12:27am CDT
    re: cbenson4
    Forum Index
    Thoughts:

    1) Salazar should release all his emails

    2) The Gold & Silver medals can now be considered somewhat gray
  • rekrunner
    5 years ago 03/29/2015 5:38am CDT
    re: Neva Legal
    Forum Index
    Does it work like that? WADA prohibits substances, and categories of substances. I think it is rare that WADA (or any organisation) explicitly approves legal supplements. If so, I seem to be unaware too.

    Here the IAAF, in a nutritional guide (2007, updated in 2013) to athletes, discuss Carnatine, among other supplements. If there was a risk of exposure to a "retroactive ban", it seems the right place for the IAAF to warn athletes. Instead they issue just general precautions about supplements: they might not work, the labels could be wrong, the supplements could be contaminated, etc.

    http://www.iaaf.org/download/download?filename=81e9220a-5905-4040-b486-734de9c4ee67.pdf&urlslug=Practical%20Guide%20to%20Nutrition

    Neva Legal wrote:
    You do not seem to be aware the L-Carnetine is NOT listed as "legal" by WADA. It is not listed at all, meaning it is subject to banning if WADA decides that someone took it in an attempt to enhance performance.
  • rekrunner
    5 years ago 03/29/2015 5:59am CDT
    re: Randy Oldman
    Forum Index
    The observed 11% was the total power output of a cycling time trial of 30 minutes of a group of athletes, with an average of 51 VO2max, after 24 weeks. It's not easy to translate this 11% cycling power observation for medium athletes to time improvements for a national level athlete in the marathon. (For example, 11% of 2:10:00 is 00:14:18)

    What's interesting to me:
    - that in the study, after 12 weeks, there was no observed improvement. What mechanism would produce an improvement after 24 weeks, but not 12?
    - that no one has been able to repeat this observation (except for the third party hearsay passive voice belief about assistant coach Steve Magness and 8-9% of something improvement)

    The rest of the athletes said they tried it and saw no improvement.

    Randy Oldman wrote:
    If it improves performance by 11% we should see a sub 24 10K soon.