People don't really want Salazar caught.

I do. There is no room for cheating in sports like track and field.

We are Americans.

As Americans, we have only recently taken the low road in sports.

We are Americans.

As Americans, we used to be the standard for clean excellence.

We are Americans.

As Americans, we believed in our American methods of hard work toward a reward, and hated the idea of steroids and PEDs in track and field.

We are Americans.

Strange that we are having this discussion regarding a coach who came from an area where cheating was rampant.

-We- are Americans.

And we want him to be caught, if he is dirty. Absolutely.

U S A

Mike

[quote]Normalcy Idiocy wrote:

They say they do but they don't. It goes far deeper than just Rupp and Farah.

Can't believe I used the megalomaniac's mantra as my handle for this post. Nevertheless, it is applicable here. Frankly, I will never understand why the issue of PEDs is viewed as being so complex. It is quite simple, really:

Expose all the cheats and ban them from competition and any tie to competitive sports for life! Period!

And this goes for all sports, not only running and T&F. Call me old-school and naïve; I don't care. Everyone should have the opportunity to compete on the proverbial level playing field WITHOUT the use of PEDs. If you can't compete at a high level by following a strict diet, sleep and training regimen, then you clearly were not born with the genes to be elite. Accept it and find something else to do with your life.

It sickens me when I hear the idiots - absolute and complete IDIOTS - declare apathy over PED use. "Who cares?" they say. "We want fast times and long throws and tape measure home runs." Effing screw that! No honest athlete should have to feel compelled to cheat and put his/her health at risk just to be afforded a fair (ironic, right?) shot at success.

Again, there should be no debating this issue. Cheaters suck, and they should all be brought to permanent and inflexible justice. So, yeah, if Salazar and his group are cheats, I want them caught and busted...yesterday!

Retired Rupp wrote:

I expect Rupp will retire if the hammer comes down. I always thought Salazar was grooming him to take over NOP. Not sure what Rupp would do if coaching NOP was not possible because it would likely be disbanded.

rupp doesn't strike me as the coach mastermind type.he is as dumb as it comes.

The NCAA/MLB/NFL have all made sure that doping is not a crime. IOC works very hard in all countries it has a presence to decriminalize doping.

Nike won't be any worse off. Look at the rogues gallery of dopers they've sponsored. It hasn't harmed their brand one bit.

BALCO actually made some news and it had no impact on the T&F Americans watch every four years.

Americans are mostly okay with doping and corruption.[/quote]

We have enough people in prison, no need to add more for cheating at sports

Rupp doesn't strike me as a coach either, but I'd never call the guy dumb.

What makes you think he's a rock? He's always came across fairly intelligent, to me.

somebloke wrote:

Retired Rupp wrote:

I expect Rupp will retire if the hammer comes down. I always thought Salazar was grooming him to take over NOP. Not sure what Rupp would do if coaching NOP was not possible because it would likely be disbanded.

rupp doesn't strike me as the coach mastermind type.he is as dumb as it comes.

Salazar would be the hidden Wizard of Oz operating behind Rupp. Banning Salazar would not stop him from continuing to pull Rupp's puppet-strings.

I agree completely with all of your comments about cheaters and what should be done with them. I disagree when you say the issue is quite simple. It would be simple if the people running various sports felt the same way you and I do. But they don't.

Major League Baseball's popularity was sagging badly after the last player's strike. It resurrected itself with the McGuire/Sosa race to break Babe Ruth's single season home run record and resurrected itself further with Barry Bonds' pursuit of his career record and with the general popularity of having frequent home runs in a typical game. More popularity equals more money so the people running the game knew that many of those home runs were drug fueled and wanted them anyway.

Track markets itself around "name" performers and most of those names establish themselves by breaking records as well as by winning major competitions. As in baseball, those performances translate to money for those running the sport as well as for the athletes. Therefore as in baseball, there's willingness to accept the drug fueled performances and reluctance to ban those giving them. I'm not making any sort of accusation about Bolt's cleanliness or dirtiness and the legitimacy of the times he's run, for example. But I would bet heavily that if they are tainted we'll never hear of it, not with the sport administered as it is now. He's simply "too big to fail" at this point. The consequences for the sport, financial ones, would be devastating. The same is true for USATF and NOP in regards to athletes like Centrowitz and Rupp who have rejuvenated interest in US distance running to some extent. And that's why it's not quite simple.

The interesting thing at this point when you look at the hard facts no one, not a single person in the group has been busted for anything.

The group have been tested at maybe the highest ongoing levels of any elite club athletes in the world.

Every article by the the press is assumptive and hearsay vs fact. The FBI?

The FBI does not issue statements on wether is investigating something or not. As much as the British press may be in love with scandal and drama, the FBI would not be to concerned about a British citizen.

As a whole the sport of track field has never been cleaner than at this moment.

Yes past years PED's where rampant across all disciplines all countries, the current crack down has slowed it dramatically.

Does Salazar stretch of the limits of whats legally available for recovery and or treatment, yes of course he does as any other elite does in the world. You don't have to look far to see we have developed a performance enhancement culture around drinks, energy bars, vitamins and other recovery boosting supplements ,cryo freeze,etc. Just look around your local running store supplement shelf, how about the all vitamin shops around your town, how every publication that has do with fitness or conditioning has a new formula of concoctions to benefit your performance.

I wonder what all the naysayers will say when when all this washes out and the formula of very hard work for Al's group shows through.

I want the cheater buried for the rest of his life, banned, barred from track and field for ever revealed to be the vile despicable cheat that he is !!!

Truth behold wrote:

The interesting thing at this point when you look at the hard facts no one, not a single person in the group has been busted for anything

Another interesting fact is that only people with a legitimate mental disorder can believe Salazar hasn't broken any serious rules, that Galen Rupp ran 26:44 because Salazar is a genius and Rupp is just that much better than Virgin, Nenow et al. from earlier eras, and that people like Rowbury who show up after plateauing at the world-class level for years drop significant amounts of time thanks to legal methods alone. And on and on and on.

All of the smoke must just be smoldering resentment from AlSal's detractors and not an indicator of a massive conflagration, right?

No one has seen Trump's tax returns, so we can assume based on his upstanding personality in other areas that he has nothing to hide and is just a private person, right? "Interesting"!

Digging too much into this will bring to light things that cannot be shared in the public as it will destroy the integrity of the sport. The highest level of corruption featuring the Sports Agencies and Sports Federation. Notice the winning patterns at global championships since 2008 where faster times means more attention to the sport which translates to big bucks for major corporations.

The problem is money and the ignorance of the masses. I call it the Lance Armstrong effect. How many people in the US were cycling fans before Lance? The majority of the masses like "winners" not the sport itself. And people inside the sport, who are in a position to profit, like money. So they will sell their souls and the sport to make money - which means to create a winner (a name) and they are willing to cheat to do so.

When it comes to selling popular sports figures, a very small percentage of people know enough and care if an athlete is cheating; the rest, they just want a winner and they don't know enough about any of it to understand or care. They just want to support a winner. Mostly then, for the general public, talking about drug use just makes you a Debbie Downer and all you are doing is wrecking the hype of their beloved sport idol.

For those of us who care - how great would it be to just see the combination of talent and the person willing to work the hardest, hurt the most, etc. win? If you run, that's what you want - you don't want to see some drug or pill win - you want to see miles and miles of hard work, pain and effort win the day. That's the stuff.

Truth, brother.

Harriet Beecher Tubman wrote:

Another interesting fact is that only people with a legitimate mental disorder can believe Salazar hasn't broken any serious rules, that Galen Rupp ran 26:44 because Salazar is a genius and Rupp is just that much better than Virgin, Nenow et al. from earlier eras, and that people like Rowbury who show up after plateauing at the world-class level for years drop significant amounts of time thanks to legal methods alone. And on and on and on.

I could say the same for every other training group.

Evan Jager almost ran sub 8 and sub 13 because Schumacher is a genius and Jager is just better than every US steepler and most 5k runners ever. Right....

Also, Rowbury never really dropped a significant amount of time. Her progressions are similar to Jenny Simpson. Both ran their PR's in the 1500 in 2008/2009 and never touched them again till 2015/2016.

Care to continue?

I want every cheat outed as a cheat. American, British, German, Australian, Moroccan, Algerian, Kenyan, Ethiopian, doesn't matter. Down with all cheats, and if that means the gold medal rightfully belongs to some no-namer in 13th place, good -- because if that's the truth, then he's not a no-namer. He's the only one whose name is worth anything.

Still...

macdaddy wrote:

Evan Jager almost ran sub 8 and sub 13 because Schumacher is a genius and Jager is just better than every US steepler and most 5k runners ever. Right....

Why shouldn't Jager be better than Dan Lincoln (8:08 steeple) or almost as good as Bob Kennedy (12:58 5,000)? He ran much better times than they did in high school, and wasn't exactly running mega-miles then either.

Retired Rupp wrote:

I expect Rupp will retire if the hammer comes down. .

Like all the MLB players?

jhg wrote:

Still...

macdaddy wrote:

Evan Jager almost ran sub 8 and sub 13 because Schumacher is a genius and Jager is just better than every US steepler and most 5k runners ever. Right....

Why shouldn't Jager be better than Dan Lincoln (8:08 steeple) or almost as good as Bob Kennedy (12:58 5,000)? He ran much better times than they did in high school, and wasn't exactly running mega-miles then either.

And Galen Rupp is in the same boat... except he's been more dominate than Jager every step of the way (HS, College and now the Pros).

I think that most people who follow a sport really do want that sport to be on the level. BUT, they want their favorite teams or athletes to win even more so generally you find a lot of support for testing and sanctions as long as they don't look too deeply at "your" athletes. I think the only NFL fans who didn't want Goodell digging into Inflategate were Patriots' fans. We're all happy when a Kenyan, Ethiopian, or Russian is caught but we're ambivalent about looking too deeply at our people.

And the thing about cheating and money is that if you cheat your way to money you generally get to keep it. (I know Lance Armstrong took a huge hit but that was mostly from lawsuits.) Again, not to impugn Rupp, Fahrah, or Bolt, but these IF these guys were caught doping tomorrow and banned from the sport for life they've still "won," i.e., they've made a pile of money and are set for life unless they've been massively stupid with it.