Nick Symmonds: "I owe Salazar an apology unless some better evidence comes out..this process is great for this sport&quot

Gerry the Plumber wrote:

janitor wrote:

Mo and M. bishop scream roid rage??? That's a new one....

Not new at all.

Not new? How did m. Bishop get drawn into this? Just by being with Nike? Roid rage, seriously...

The "grey area" sucks for the sport ,or it doesn't, For me it does and it's good that it is in the limelight to discuss now. Deeper pockets play the grey area better and that is an uneven playing field. It comes down to that. Plus it is just kind of sickening , to see elements of our society so perverted.

On the other hand the " sport " has less to do with elites than some people want to hold on to. It's all very self serving at the top, running or reporting on it, no matter how you want to slice it.

The sport is also. more so , people doing all-comers events and maybe running in high school to cope with adolescence. getting a scholarship is nice. Old people staying fit and off anti-depressants and what not. Having a good time socially, that's the sport. Those ideas are kind of pissed on on let's run, also for the sake of the sport? I like Nick Symmonds, I guess, but he is definitely on the self-serving side of it.

I kind of have to laugh at how this soap opera is somehow, the sport. Compare it to an idea like, professional fishermen own the outdoors, it looks silly. Most of us could care not too much.

LetsRun.com wrote:

he called Salazar's rebuttal one of the "finest rebuttals" he's ever seen.

Nick Symmonds probably also thinks that Seth Rogen is one of the "finest thespians" in the history of film, and that the Backstreet Boys were an artistic phenomenon.

He has a lot of talent, charm and personality. Beyond that I wouldn't call him especially gifted. It would be impossible for even a steadfast Al Sal supporter to read Salazar's retort with genuine comprehension and not find it full of glaring deficiencies.

CYA wrote:

Does Symmonds realize a PR prepared most of Salazar's manifesto?

Salazar obviously wrote the letter himself, and if he enlisted the services of a paid proofreader or editor, it had to have been a "professional" he found on Craigslist or something.

Just to cite one example, no competent editor would have let this slide:

I have coached 55 professional athletes in my career. Of those 55 athletes only 5 have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism after I had started coaching them and only 8 have been diagnosed with exercise induced asthma. That is 9.1% and 14.5% respectively. The incident rate for athletes in the Oregon Project being diagnosed with exercise induced asthma is actually significantly lower than the incident rate amongst U.S. Olympic middle and long distance runners generally.

"Incident rate" is both redundant (he means "incidence") and wrong (the epidemiological term he wants here is "prevalence," not "incidence"). There's also the matter of Salazar using the word "only" despite 9.1% actually being an unusually high prevalence of hypothyroidism (and the figure he gives doesn't include K. Goucher or anyone else who came to the NOP having already been diagnosed). There whole document is hamstrung by missing and gratuitous commas, incorrect verb tenses (as in the second sentence above) and worse.

The fact that the letter is poorly written doesn't imply anything about Salazar's guilt, but it argues very strongly against the idea that it was prepared or even reviewed by public-relations professionals. At best he probably had a trusted buddy look it over.

KMB wrote:

There whole document is hamstrung by missing and gratuitous commas, incorrect verb tenses (as in the second sentence above) and worse.

I guess it's easy to make mistakes.

Grammer Police wrote:

KMB wrote:

There whole document is hamstrung by missing and gratuitous commas, incorrect verb tenses (as in the second sentence above) and worse.

I guess it's easy to make mistakes.

Yeah, that was bad. But it also suggests that no one, including me, is looking over my stuff before I punch the "Post Message" button.

As someone else pointed out, the big problem with the letter isn't the typos and bad writing, it's the fact that it wasn't vetted for factual correctness. Even when you strip out the stuff that's purely Salazar's word versus that of his accusers, "1 Albertonians" contains a number of internal inconsistencies and misstatements of fact. Whatever Nike's role in this, it clearly didn't care whether Salazar presented an airtight document to the public.

I'm guessing that if you asked Symmonds what he found so compelling about the rebuttal, he'd say it was the pull-no-punches wording, not the fact that Salazar did a thorough job of putting specific claims to bed.

THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!!!!!!! DUH!!!! Opportunists and being heard. If they had all come out one by one when they FIRST knew about it, then and only then would it be a different story. IT'S NEWS AND THE GOUCHERS AND SYMMONDS HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO ELEVATE THEM SO THAT PEOPLE WILL LISTEN...see this thread for proof!

I'm glad others see this backwards as well…I don't think the allegations against Salazar and Galen are doping/cheating. I find the situation to be like Nick said, "he said, she said…" The athletes that have come forward don't have evidence of actual illegal doping.

agreedddd wrote:

The athletes that have come forward have not offered evidence of actual illegal doping.

Well, there are understandable reasons for this. Give it time.

Actually, I think he does mean incidence and though he is not strictly using the term correctly. Being diagnosed with asthma/hypothyroidism is an event and thus could reasonably be expressed as an incidence. However, the values should be expressed as diagnoses/time period rather than a straight percentage.

He is talking about individuals who were diagnosed with these conditions after he started coaching them, so the prevalence in his training group could be higher than the percentages he gives if the individuals were diagnosed earlier in their careers.

I don't understand why people are concerned with the thyroid stuff. If Salazar thinks a thyroid problem, however borderline it may be, is preventing an athlete from fulfilling their potential then it makes perfect sense for him to explore every avenue to get it rectified. Not doing so would actually be negligent. If other athletes/coaches are not looking out issues like this then that is a bad reflection on them, not Salazar.

Can't read Nick wrote:

If Symonds thinks Salazar's facilities rebuttal is the finest he's ever seen then Symonds is an illiterate fool.

LOL. But, in all fairness, how many rebuttals has he read in his life? To me it seems like a typical hyperbolic statement that doesn't really mean that much. I simply read it as he thought the rebuttal was decent enough. And considering the allegations lodged, "decent enough" is impressive - to Symmonds anyway.

Poison Ivy League wrote:

Nick Symmonds probably also thinks that Seth Rogen is one of the "finest thespians" in the history of film, and that the Backstreet Boys were an artistic phenomenon.

He says Boondock Saints is his very favorite movie