Let's be clear Ritz, Galen etc are not victims, they are cheats.

Rojo, for once I agree with this reasonable post.

Suggestion, please look up these three words:

Their

There

They're

They're actually three different words.

If Galen and Ritz were E. African you'd be defending him in true SJW self-hating style. You try to deflect with a minor mention of Mo, but then nothing. Coward.

How's Aden doing?

I agree with this. Being a sponsored athlete, you feel helpless and disposable. You don't want to lose the crumbs you have. It's easy to say you'd do the right thing when you are on the outside of the situation.

Here's some food for thought:

1. the second Ritz speaks out is the second he's done from the sport. He loses his financial support (no one wants a branded athlete), he loses his emotional support from his fans, he can't get into diamond leagues because Nike has that much power. He's luckier than a track runner because he always can get a starting lane on the roads and the roads pay decently. But if a track athlete speaks out, they might as well retire.

Ritz worked for over a decade to get to where he was. He still had more to give. I'm sure his internal press secretary was doing all sorts of gymnastics to make him feel like he wasn't doing anything wrong. Plus the shared blame with the coach makes it easier to mentally obsolve yourself from responsibility.

2. The cult like environment is hard to go against. I'm sure ritz trusted Al like a father. If your dad tells you to do something for your own good and that nothing bad will happen, you dont question it. The coach-athlete relationship relies on trust.

3. What pisses me off is that Al was abusing that trust in the relationship.

4. Any athlete that was in that group that got out and is still running well is an incredibly resillant person.

5. Anyone who was subjected to that situation gets my sympathy. It's not fair for a 20-something year old to be put in that type of difficult decision. The former athletes of the group have PTSD. Also related, if someone knows Mary Cain, can you give her a hug from me?

Side note: I wasn't subjected to the pressure to dope. Because my coaches weren't affiliated with that. But if my college coach told me to run off a cliff, I'd have done it without thinking. Or if he told me to take any supplement, I would have. So I know how the relationship affects the athlete. I also know what it feels like to be a Nike sponsored athlete. You are walking on egg shells. It's terrifying to have your livelihood and life in someone else's control.

This is no witch hunt! Just look at the various elements in this Sh*t Storm:

Questionable Thyroid Meds

Alberto and his Andro-Gel

Infusions

Asthma Meds

Questionable doctors

Rubbing your kid down with Testosterone

Questionable prescriptions

Athletes bailing out

I'm sorry, but this is a classic case of "Walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck............"

Remember.......Smoke = Fire.

I am not talking about the L-carnitine. I am talking about the thyroid meds. He testified that he knew he was being prescribed thyroid medication that he didn't need as his levels were in the normal range. That is cheating, that should be considered medical malpractice. When 9% of the adult population is taking thyroid medication and it sounds like 100% of the NOP athletes are taking it, something is amiss. Are we to believe that Oregon is this epicenter of a thyroid epidemic? If so, everyone should flee Oregon immediately.

knots really about wrote:

p.s. I don't think you guys know Dathan. He would never knowingly take something that was considered illegal by substance or volume of that substance. Again, believe what you want but he's a stand up guy.

Well I say the same thing about Galen Rupp. Rupp is a great guy and would never do anything illegal.

BUTTHOLE SURFER wrote:

This is no witch hunt! Just look at the various elements in this Sh*t Storm:

Questionable Thyroid Meds

Alberto and his Andro-Gel

Infusions

Asthma Meds

Questionable doctors

Rubbing your kid down with Testosterone

Questionable prescriptions

Athletes bailing out

I'm sorry, but this is a classic case of "Walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck............"

Remember.......Smoke = Fire.

^This, plus

Drugs shipped in hollow books

Slaney banned for testo doping

Rupp given testosterone medication

Rupp having suspicious T/E ratio in an OOC test

Centro having suspicious off score in an OOC test

Mo not hearing the doorbell/knocking/phone calls for a full 60 minutes

Athletes being ordered to lie about their infusions

...

What did we forget?

I would say that as a Nike-sponsored athlete, you feel helpless and disposable because you ARE disposable. Nike doesn't care.

But you're not helpless.

While I can certainly feel empathy for athletes that let themselves get put into these situations, because it most certainly sucks big time, that can't be an acceptable excuse. Every athlete who fails a drug test will say they didn't know, or that it was an accident, or that the doctor told them it was legal. Not knowing, not being willing to say something... that just can't be acceptable, or there's no system period.

Sympathy? Yes. Empathy? Yes. Excuses? No.

You have to stand up.

Thanks for providing insight and context, Phoebe.

What do all these drug cheats have in common?

NIKE!

It's an evil company that has used cheats like Salazars NOP, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, "half" of Kenya and the list goes on...

The US government needs to go after this evil corporation!

Then go ahead, who's stopping you? Say what you want about Rupp, I won't dispute it. I've never met Rupp and would have no reason to disagree with you.I'm talking about Dathan and if he knew it was illegal, over the limits, he wouldn't do it. You can list a million drugs, or one. If there was a threshold, he wouldn't go past it. Could someone lie to him, about amounts that were more than he was being told, sure...quite possible. But that's not the same thing as the point that I'm making. Some are claiming that he went there knowing that Al was dirty. That's total BS, but keep spewing you false rhetoric, I don't care.

Oh Yeah? wrote:

knots really about wrote:

p.s. I don't think you guys know Dathan. He would never knowingly take something that was considered illegal by substance or volume of that substance. Again, believe what you want but he's a stand up guy.

Well I say the same thing about Galen Rupp. Rupp is a great guy and would never do anything illegal.

Sounds remarkably similar to the Lance Armstrong defenders pre-Oprah interview. "Lance is a cancer survivor, he'd never cheat."

"Ritz is from Michigan, he won footlocker, he was popular on Dyestat, he'd never cheat."

Sounds like you're comparing apples to dirt. Ya think?

Lance lover wrote:

Sounds remarkably similar to the Lance Armstrong defenders pre-Oprah interview. "Lance is a cancer survivor, he'd never cheat."

"Ritz is from Michigan, he won footlocker, he was popular on Dyestat, he'd never cheat."

And for the record, I never defended Lance Armstrong as I believed Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, etc...testified under oath what they saw and that Lance knew and knowingly took it. If you can't see the difference, go back under your rock with my condolences.

knots really about wrote:

Sounds like you're comparing apples to dirt. Ya think?

Lance lover wrote:

Sounds remarkably similar to the Lance Armstrong defenders pre-Oprah interview. "Lance is a cancer survivor, he'd never cheat."

"Ritz is from Michigan, he won footlocker, he was popular on Dyestat, he'd never cheat."

Lance lover wrote:

Sounds remarkably similar to the Lance Armstrong defenders pre-Oprah interview. "Lance is a cancer survivor, he'd never cheat."

"Ritz is from Michigan, he won footlocker, he was popular on Dyestat, he'd never cheat."

Actually the Dathan supporters sound a lot like the Lance supporters which makes little sense as the report indicates Dathan knew something was amiss but he chose to do it in order to stay in the NOP. And yes a tough spot to be in but not impossible. I get no one wants to be accountable for their actions anymore but to claim they need sympathy is really a disservice to those few athletes still doing it clean. There is also little to no chance Dathan didn't have an inkling of what he was getting himself into.

Wrong. Ritz statement was from 2015. He was a Nike athlete for nearly 20 months after his statement. You need a new angle.

Oh Yeah? wrote:

knots really about wrote:

p.s. I don't think you guys know Dathan. He would never knowingly take something that was considered illegal by substance or volume of that substance. Again, believe what you want but he's a stand up guy.

Well I say the same thing about Galen Rupp. Rupp is a great guy and would never do anything illegal.

What know for sure is that both of them are willing to go into the grey areas (i.e. using drugs that just haven't been banned yet) to try and get a competitive edge. It is definitely sketchy.

Personally I would love to see the studies that suggest any of this crap actually helps. Do they have any studies that suggest vo2max, thresholds, sprint power,..... increase after taking this crap? I doubt any of them offer the improvements that EPO/anabolic steroids do where the improvement is obvious.

adfadsfas wrote:

What know for sure is that both of them are willing to go into the grey areas

Well, you guys keep talking about toeing the line and grey area, but apparently both Rupp and Ritz used 4x 100 mL instead of 50 mL infusions (at least according to USADA). That's quite far line crossing.

Check the rules. Mr. Obvious for example posted them: standard bans for such infractions are 2 - 4 years, depending on whether it was intentional. Hard to argue there was no intent, such as "I wanted to used 49 mL, but by mistake a bit more come out. And then I added another 100 mL bag by mistake. No intention. And then again, unintentionally. And then again because I didn't pay attention. Not my fault."

It should be a four year ban, period. But somehow USADA/USATF will let them get away, mark me words.