Ben True throwing down the clean sport gauntlet - Shares personal USADA info and volunteers sample for doping research

Funny thing wrote:

Galen could provide same thing (he's never failed a drug test) and a "sample" for research and it would be decried as a PR/coverup event.

The point is that True and Huddle aren't on any TUEs. Salazar's athletes are undoubtedly on several TUEs (e.g. thyroxine and Advair) at a rate that is many times higher than would be expected in the general population. It's impossible that so many elite athletes would have severe asthma or hypothyroidism.

Athletes like Rupp, Levins and others at NOP are abusing the TUE system to gain unfair advantage for medical conditions they don't really have. While potentially a "loophole" in the system, they are using these medications to enhance performance - i.e. they are using performance enhancing drugs. These athletes know they are basically cheating and probably justify it because they think everyone else is doing it. True and Huddle prove this is not accurate.

What True and Huddle have done is refreshing voluntary transparency. These are not the kind of people who are using banned PEDs like EPO or testosterone. I have zero doubt True and Huddle are clean and would do anything to prove it.

I know there are lots of Letsrun trolls who assume anyone who is faster than them must be cheating. Some people do cheat, but the reality is that the trolls lack the natural talent of any of the elite athletes. True and Huddle are naturally talented and ARE getting cheated by their elite peers who abuse TUEs. We should all be celebrating athletes like True and Huddle who do things the right way.

Again we point out that 'testing clean' is not an indication of not using PEDs unfortunately 'testing clean' is not proof of anything other than the athlete passed this test.

I have personally argued that any medication is a performance enhansor. If you have allergies or asthma and talking something for it, you are taking a PED.

Genetics / evolution have given you inferior genes but you take a drug to be "normal." No different than micro dosing.

I know I'm the only one of very few who feel this way but the truth is you are enhancing what nature gave you.

Do you live in the northeast? If so, your home is a HUGE PED for keeping you warm all winter. You'd die otherwise. If you live in Arizona/Nevada don't even respond.Do you drink water from a river, untouched by mankind? Ever drink from a pond? If you drink from treated water sources, that's a HUGE PED that many many people in the world do not have access to.

The Donger wrote:

I have personally argued that any medication is a performance enhansor. If you have allergies or asthma and talking something for it, you are taking a PED.

Genetics / evolution have given you inferior genes but you take a drug to be "normal." No different than micro dosing.

I know I'm the only one of very few who feel this way but the truth is you are enhancing what nature gave you.

Agreed. Anything that furthers discussion about TUE abuse or usage is what we need right now. Plus it doesn't hurt to have athletes you can root for with a clean conscience. Only the haters/deranged are going to declare that all elites are doping.

Fact Checker, put this guy dow wrote:

Do you live in the northeast? If so, your home is a HUGE PED for keeping you warm all winter. You'd die otherwise.

If you live in Arizona/Nevada don't even respond.

Do you drink water from a river, untouched by mankind? Ever drink from a pond? If you drink from treated water sources, that's a HUGE PED that many many people in the world do not have access to.

fact checker, i recognize there's an element of the absurd there, but i appreciate the questions, and dont know that there are clear answers. i assume most elite athletes would be okay with the notion of folks sleeping inside and drinking clean water. and other things too: maintaining a very good diet, or a very particular diet, or access to heat/ice, etc.

but i take your point to be--who decided those were okay, and how are they fundamentally different from some of the stuff we're saying is wrong? take true's probiotic. plenty of folks on this planet with really "bad" gut bacteria, and plenty of evidence that might be detrimental to performance (whether in the form of chronic inflammation or inability to digest and thus inability to recover, etc). whys taking the probiotic okay? whys even knowing about the possibility the probiotic might be useful okay?

is it at some level just a case of "the community decides"? and for right now, for better or worse, a majority of the community thinks what alberto does is unacceptable (or acceptable)? i have no idea if theres a better way (my intuition is that community decides is a better rule than wada makes canonical man/canonical woman blueprints). just wondering where the outrage might come from if nobodys really agreed on the background rules in the first place.

Donger, do you realize that environmental factors are often the root cause of allergies and the resulting asthma? Where someone grew up or lives now could have determined whether or not they develop asthma.

And are you ok with vitamin and mineral supplementation or should that be banned as well?

It's actually pretty straight forward and objective. Probiotics, fresh water, multivitamins, good sleeping conditions etc. are not things that require theraputic use exemptions (TUEs) and are not banned. Thyroid hormone and Advair are on the TUE list. The only way to get a TUE is to have a medical condition that one is treating. The issue with Salazar / Rupp / Levins / NOP is that they have impossibly high rates of TUEs, because they've learned to game the system to be diagnosed with medical conditions they don't really have so that they can use TUEs as performance enhancers.

TUEs could be legitimate, but again, the rate that Salazars athletes are diagnosed with these conditions is impossible. An athlete using a TUE for a questionable diagnosis like asthma or hypothyroidism is willing to cross ethical boundaries, and are thus more likely to be clear dopers who use EPO or testosterone. Certainly athletes who use TUEs aren't necessarily dopers, but the probability is much higher. By similar logic, if an athlete dosent use TUEs I think it is less likely they dope with banned substances.

Sledge wrote:

Agreed. Anything that furthers discussion about TUE abuse or usage is what we need right now. Plus it doesn't hurt to have athletes you can root for with a clean conscience. Only the haters/deranged are going to declare that all elites are doping.

How about just knowing how much authority WADA/USADA/Your NADO here have?

How about the sports federations role in doping? It can't get much clearer than USATF's silence on 17 different athletes describing Nike's doping program.

TUEs and even rampant Testosterone abuse are a side show. But, maybe that's your point.

For those of us not up to speed, please explain how Prednisone and / or Allegra helps performance please.

John Clendon wrote:

juan_t_reyna wrote:

is there a real philosophical/moral/other distinction to be made between allegra and prednisone?

how about allegra v. cytomel for somebody with tsh above 5? above 2?

what about vitamin d/iron v. allegra?

not sure i have a take on it, but seems like the argument could be made that anything youre putting in the body to remediate its natural deficiencies might be problematic...

Allegra -

http://www.rxlist.com/allegra-drug.htm

Prednisone -

http://www.rxlist.com/deltasone-drug.htm

Please be aware that they both have substantially different active ingredients.

On another note, was it a push by Saucony for two of their athletes to post this? Nothing from Duane Solomon.

Birdogger wrote:

It's actually pretty straight forward and objective. Probiotics, fresh water, multivitamins, good sleeping conditions etc. are not things that require theraputic use exemptions (TUEs) and are not banned. Thyroid hormone and Advair are on the TUE list. The only way to get a TUE is to have a medical condition that one is treating. The issue with Salazar / Rupp / Levins / NOP is that they have impossibly high rates of TUEs, because they've learned to game the system to be diagnosed with medical conditions they don't really have so that they can use TUEs as performance enhancers.

sure, i recognize theres a tue list, and i recognize wada has done a lot of exploration of many of these questions. that doesnt really answer some of the underlying questions though. if it did, this nop "scandal" wouldnt be a scandal--because its not clear nop has done anything at odds with any of the wada rules. that doesnt change the fact that a lotta folks still feel like its slimy, or maybe at odds with the spirit of the rules. there are lots of questions worth parsing, and i've posed a lot of them already, but because the "its actually objective" response glosses over most of them, id ask again: whats a "medical condition"? whats "treating"? whens "treating" equivalent to "performance enhancing," and whens it not? and many more... but i think the most interesting question at bottom for me is, who decides? im pretty sure the optimal answer isnt "wada"...

Birdogger wrote:

It's actually pretty straight forward and objective. Probiotics, fresh water, multivitamins, good sleeping conditions etc. are not things that require theraputic use exemptions (TUEs) and are not banned. Thyroid hormone and Advair are on the TUE list.

I don't understand why you would make this stuff up. Thyroid hormone does not require a TUE and is not regulated in any way by WADA. Advair also does not require a TUE when used at the standard dose. Don't believe me? Take a look at the WADA list here:

Again, I simply don't understand why people go around making assertions that are blatantly false. I'm no fan of the abuse of prescription medications for enhancing performance, but don't make stuff up about how "straight forward and objective" it is.

[quote]METHODS:

Ten recreational male athletes completed two cycling trials at 70-75% peak O2 consumption until exhaustion after either placebo (Pla, lactose) or oral prednisolone (Pred, 60 mg.d(-1) for 1 wk) treatment, according to a double-blind and randomized protocol. Blood samples were collected at rest and during exercise and recovery to determine ACTH, growth hormone (GH), prolactin (PRL), DHEA, insulin, blood glucose, and blood lactate values.

RESULTS:

Time of cycling was significantly increased after chronic Pred treatment (Pred: 74.5+/-9.5 min; Pla: 46.1+/-3.3 min, P

The NOP is ruining the reputation of people who have true hypothyroidism, and honestly need the medicine to function normally.

A lot of misinformation on here.

Swoony B wrote:

He's soooooooooooo blue-collar. Must be the all-time clean world record holder (well, except for the white Goddess Paula and Mr Congeniality #1 and #1a, Haile and Bernie). Ben and Bernard's B-Sample are just so real and anti-NOPe. Gosh I hope it snows in Rio because snow is True-approved. Snow is pure and clean like Ben.

#ijizzforben

#untilmyjealousyconsumesmeandihatehimlikeeveryotherrunnerfasterthanme

I'm no fan of True but, are you a fan of any runner? Are you even a fan of running?

Not sure what happened above, but in reply to:

(for some reason I had to replace all of the "less than" symbols for quoting to work...)

sure, I like just about all runners - it's the moving target double-standard that gets old. Thought that last part was obvious but maybe too over-the-top with the sarcasm?

John Clendon wrote:

On another note, was it a push by Saucony for two of their athletes to post this?

Probably, which is a good thing, wonder if we can expect the same from Nike, etc?