top Canadian coach calls out drug cheats beating his athletes

Jshsjshsh wrote:

Well it is either that, or that SR actually hasn't done all the awful things they are accused of.

I would love to see all the internet trolls actually do something to back up their claims.

If AO or SR is doing something wrong, bring a lawsuit against them. Oust the AO board. Appeal to the COA and get AO unaccredited.

Until you trolls actually "prove" something fraudulent is going on, it is all just hot air.

I know there have been a few successful appeals on a few things, but that is just the appeal process doing what it should, not evidence of fraud and corruption.

Look, no one has energy or resources to take anyone to court over the serial bad behaviour of the leadership of this group. As someone who was involved in two successful appeals that involved clear collusion with AC to rig championship bids (and the evidence of this collusion was flamingly flagrant for anyone at all interested in examining it), I would just like to see the leadership recognize the line between promoting its interests and treating the rest of the sport community like chumps to be blocked or shouldered aside. This kind of behaviour is more pathetic and unseemly than truly, dangerously corrupt. Many of us were just hoping that having had their behaviour exposed would, perhaps out of a sense of shame or honour, induce them to just stop engaging in it (and they are clearly not that good at it anyway, since they seem incapable of either effectively covering it up explaining it to a skeptical sport public). That would be more than sufficient in my view. We were also hoping that the top admin of the sport would stop letting them-- indeed, almost inviting them-- do the kinds of things they will clearly do to promote their group. What's good for SR is not necessarily what's good for the sport as a whole, they need to recognize. At the very least, the behaviour of the SR leadership has sent a signal to anyone else who would try to build a similar program that you get ahead not just by skill and energy, but by petty abuse of process and by modelling disrespect for the larger sport community and its institutions. Among other things, this is terrible example to be setting for young athletes, some of whom will inevitably become leaders in sport themselves before too long.

SB wrote:

As someone who was involved in two successful appeals that involved clear collusion with AC to rig championship bids (and the evidence of this collusion was flamingly flagrant for anyone at all interested in examining it), I would just like to see the leadership recognize the line between promoting its interests and treating the rest of the sport community like chumps to be blocked or shouldered aside.

This is the main complaint that nearly all Canadians will agree with, we just want a fair playing field when competing for championships or carding.

It's unclear how much Speed River has benefited from this kind of stuff over the years, but it appears their success was built at least partly on cheating.

11 CIS X-C titles in a row for the Guelph women and 9 of the last 10 for the men. Excellence by anyone's definition. Track results are similar for Guelph. These type of results just don't happen without many people acting in a positive way. Sorry critics. Not a believer of your interpretation of events here.

What does this have to do with Carding fraud?

Not adding up wrote:

11 CIS X-C titles in a row for the Guelph women and 9 of the last 10 for the men. Excellence by anyone's definition. Track results are similar for Guelph. These type of results just don't happen without many people acting in a positive way. Sorry critics. Not a believer of your interpretation of events here.

Guelph has done a great job recruiting top Canadian talent, that was mentioned a few times in this thread already and nobody is denying their ability to recruit and accumulate talented athletes.

Winning college titles doesn't negate their indiscretions. How would that even work? Oh, Guelph won the CIS XC title, therefore that proves DST didn't stack the National team with his own athletes for Chiba?

Hundreds of posts between here and Trackie and nobody defending Speed River is willing to even touch on the actual details. Rae and Proudfoot steered well clear of actually discussing the carding details. Why? Because everyone knows shady stuff went down this time, including Speed River athletes, and they know they can only lose by discussing it publicly. So now they will hide and try to wait this one out.

Well said, SB.

One of the difficulties with something like the carding issue is that it might affect athletes from many different clubs, so no one club is going to feel like dealing with the expense of pursuing it because they don't have the resources (time, money, expertise) on their own. It's like when a big company sells a defective product that isn't covered under warranty. A single person won't get far against the company. But if this happens to hundreds of people, now you pool your resources and pursue a class action. It's difficult to get that sort of thing organized here, because most people don't want to go public with their concerns, hence SB being one of the only coaches really publicly voicing this in his own name. And most people don't want to put in the effort either. It's a lot of work to pursue legal action or arbitration. There's a lot of time and hard work involved. So they gripe about it and hope someone else will do it.

It's clear there should be separate oversight ensuring fair distribution of funds and regularly auditing the decisions of the provincial and national governing bodies, but it's very unlikely we can expect that to happen anytime soon, since those of us discussing this are as close as it gets right now. An appeal of the current funding issues would have to get to the right people, whoever those people are, to even get anywhere, and it seems like the individual athlete appeals aren't addressing it.

You have to get 1 person to talk. Everyone making the decisions on carding have agreed to collusion.

Not adding up wrote:

11 CIS X-C titles in a row for the Guelph women and 9 of the last 10 for the men. Excellence by anyone's definition. Track results are similar for Guelph. These type of results just don't happen without many people acting in a positive way. Sorry critics. Not a believer of your interpretation of events here.

All true, including the part about people "acting in a positive way".

For all I know you're too young to recall this, but I have been a long time admirer, even defender at times, of Guelph and its athletes. Until a few years ago, they were a model program for me--and they still are in many respects. Its leadership really is capable of doing great things-- and without colluding to rig bids, brazenly stacking national teams when given the chance, having athletes start a championship race with the primary purpose of impeding other athletes (then letting one of said athletes take the public flack for it), or this latest thing of submitting "fudged" applications, then working the committee receiving those applications to get special consideration for SR athletes. That the SR leadership has shown the ability to succeed without doing these things just makes their resort to them all the sadder and more disappointing. It just does not have to be this way.

I'm hoping this latest thing (and it has not played out just yet) will induce a sudden outbreak of conscience and integrity somewhere within the group. I simply can't believe that it doesn't bother at least a few people close to or within it.

When your competitive days are over (and they seem to end before you know it) all you have is your reputation. You'll get some respect for having worked hard and succeeded, but you'll get a lot more if you did it with grace and integrity at all times. (And, no, just having been a good and loyal team member won't do it; the degree of respect you showed for the whole sport community will be the real measure your integrity. And it only takes a little bit of bad behaviour to erase a ton goodwill). In Canada, we have some great role models in this respect (including Dennis Fairall, Hugh Cameron, and Paul Poce, all of whom succeeded over many decades while managing to be be universally admired and respected inside and outside their programs.) At their current rate, the SR leadership will be remembered as winners, but not much more.

Put me in the same category. I used to look up to these coaches and thought someday I want to run a program like Speed River. Now I realize I never want to run a program in that manner. I want my athletes to act with integrity and honesty and I want our coaches to treat our competition with respect on and off the track; in that regard my club and many others in Ontario are far more successful than Speed River.

They have so much talent so it boggles the mind why they resort to such tactics.

Has SR jumped the shark?

905COACH wrote:

They have so much talent so it boggles the mind why they resort to such tactics.

Has SR jumped the shark?

Talented athletes keep going to Guelph. I suppose Toronto might be catching up on the middle distance side and might already have more post-collegiate women as that's always been a weakness for guelph, keeping women around and healthy.

Talent keeps going there because trackie keeps hiding the truth

You have many good points as always. I'm just putting the idea out there that a club like SR with all it's success over many many years can't achieve all these great results with deep rooted flaws. At least in my experience I haven't seen success and fraud go hand in hand over the long term. Wrongdoing etc will usually undo an organization at some point if it exists at all. It goes against reason to believe that SR can be so accomplished across all aspects of track and cross country and be a bad organization at the same time. We're talking decades of excellence and the peak hasn't been reached yet from what I can see.

Perhaps in looking at the carding for 2015 one person could see wrong doing while another person could see evidence of advocating for their athlete. Isn't it possible that good intentioned volunteers and coaches are just promoting their own as opposed to acting with malice? It seems like all the complaining about SR is over the top when it can just as easily be that a committee of dedicated volunteers made some subjective judgement calls when trying to work with some detailed carding criteria. Maybe they viewed the criteria as guidelines to be respected, but not set in stone.

Were the athletes severely beaten? Do you think it was 'roid rage?

Not adding up wrote:

a club like SR with all it's success over many many years can't achieve all these great results with deep rooted flaws. At least in my experience I haven't seen success and fraud go hand in hand over the long term.

I have a Russian swimming program I'd like to sell you.

Not adding up wrote:

Perhaps in looking at the carding for 2015 one person could see wrong doing while another person could see evidence of advocating for their athlete. Isn't it possible that good intentioned volunteers and coaches are just promoting their own as opposed to acting with malice? It seems like all the complaining about SR is over the top when it can just as easily be that a committee of dedicated volunteers made some subjective judgement calls when trying to work with some detailed carding criteria. Maybe they viewed the criteria as guidelines to be respected, but not set in stone.

You're making a very important point, but don't seem to be making it deliberately.

Yes, much of the SR criticism is over-the-top. SB and other posters have stated and re-stated here that the intention isn't to depict DST or Moulton as malicious, but to point out that real or perceived conflict of interest on a selection committee is problematic, especially when there's no process in place to access information on how these decisions are made.

Even if we're all in agreement that SR coaches are just dedicated volunteers making subjective decisions, how can you not see that it's a problem for certain coaches to advocate for their own athletes outside of published criteria (and then avoid any public oversight by not having to respond to questions from concerned athletes/coaches).

We're discussing use of public money for individual gain here, however well intentioned these individuals may be. If you were in another club, hoping for Q4G funding to help pay rent, you would likely see this differently.

Or maybe you're a troll and I just wasted six minutes of my life, in which case, you win.

Not a troll or about winning. It has been mentioned earlier on this thread that the recourse available is to appeal. We are seeing the results typical of any committee process where subjective calls are made. Not everyone will agree with the outcome.

If someone was to tell me that a runner who competed 5 times at CIS X and finished - two 1sts, a 3rd, and two 6ths isn't a candidate for funding I would say something is wrong.

Not adding up wrote:

Not a troll or about winning. It has been mentioned earlier on this thread that the recourse available is to appeal. We are seeing the results typical of any committee process where subjective calls are made. Not everyone will agree with the outcome.

If someone was to tell me that a runner who competed 5 times at CIS X and finished - two 1sts, a 3rd, and two 6ths isn't a candidate for funding I would say something is wrong.

So if all decisions were made in a rational, defensible manner, would you not agree that the selection committee should be in a position to comment on why they operated outside of the published criteria to accommodate certain athletes but not others?

As much as SR defenders will try to marginalize these questions as trouble being stirred up by Internet trolls, I think the issue's been on the minds of the broader running community since the Q4G recipients were announced. The fact that we're this far into a thread on an international forum shows the issue may have some legs.

Not adding up wrote:

Not a troll or about winning. It has been mentioned earlier on this thread that the recourse available is to appeal. We are seeing the results typical of any committee process where subjective calls are made. Not everyone will agree with the outcome.

If someone was to tell me that a runner who competed 5 times at CIS X and finished - two 1sts, a 3rd, and two 6ths isn't a candidate for funding I would say something is wrong.

This is what has been said over and over again, though. People aren't saying that these athletes aren't good athletes, capable of getting Quest for Gold. People are saying that these athletes did not earn the funding. There are criteria. They didn't meet the criteria. Therefore they did not earn the funding. End of story. CIS results have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with qualifying for Quest for Gold.

There is something wrong, which is that athletes who are fully capable of qualifying for funding got it, but didn't bother to qualify for it. They had the exact same opportunities to qualify as everyone else. They opted not to use them. Then they bypassed everyone else and got the funding anyway. Whether that's the committee, the club they're involved with, the athletes themselves, or a combination of those things, it still amounts to the playing field not being level.

It might not have been such an issue, either, given that these athletes are, as said, capable of qualifying for QFG. People might not have noticed it at all, except that this is part of a string of problematic occurrences over the past few years, so these decisions are under the microscope. We likely can't expect it to go anywhere, because by this time next year I expect that the criteria will have been changed to allow exactly this sort of thing to happen within the rules.