I agree fully with Debutante that we need ideally to hear from Salazar, Rupp, Ritz, the Gouchers, Magness, and several other people very soon on this whole affair.
I have stated in every post here and elsewhere I've made on this topic how much I like and admire Galen Rupp, and also that I admire Coach Salazar. I'm also a very loyal Nike customer. Aside from a few things for soccer, all my sports-related wardrobe is Nike and that's track, soccer, and basketball. I send thousands on Nike every year and like their gear. However, as a coach I cannot turn a blind eye to how very suspect information on Salazar and his athletes keeps being unearthed.
Had Magness or the Gouchers simply had wild-eyed allegations, fine. But the BBC/ProPublica report was very thorough—as much as possible given the lack of cooperation from NOP and Nike. Then, you have the current leaked report as well. I've read the whole report now and I find it while not absolutely conclusive, a very good work of consummate research and asks the right questions. I should add outside of being a coach I'm also a journalist and in college worked for four years as a medical research lab tech working on clinical drug approval trial. So, when I read something like this, I can with fairly good confidence discern if the research is at least being approached as an appropriate investigation and it seems it is.
Why would you send multiple athletes to an endocrinologist out of state when their basic labs and presumably their regular GP's reports would not indicate the need for an endocrinologist? Why would you work with complex and very probably banned infusions unless you felt these would produce a competitive advantage? I mean, if there WAS a valid therapeutic need for the infusions, why not get a TUE?
I do not compete at the level of Rupp or Ritz myself but every time I go to see any doctor, I have already printed out the TUE forms in case I am Rx'd anything and we need to talk about the TUE procedure. I do not see how anyone who is coaching world-class athletes would 1) go around this 2) tell the athletes something is kosher when upon review, it is clear at best things are very murky, 3) allow or encourage athlete medical records to be manipulated and also not share those records with the athletes in their complete form, 4) make medical decisions for athletes when the coach is not a physician, 5) solicit the help of one doctor who is out of state for almost all athletes. Does it not seem very suspect? If I was seeing anything like this—even remotely like this—taking place at an NCAA institution I cannot even tell you how panicked I would be. And I'm pretty sure a very high-level review of that coach's actions would be commenced. I don't see Nike having done this, or at least they won't speak about it, and it seems NOP went along on Coach Salazar's whims for quite some time.
Epstein's ProPublic reporting was quality, but had many gaps due to lack of cooperation. We had to take Magness et al at their word, which I was willing to do, but many would not. Now, we have an investigation with some very alarming findings. I just don't think we can try to explain it away so easily.