Guys, give it a day or two before starting the witch hunt!

Agreed. At the same time I am weary that you are a shill, so I am reserving judgment in any direction. On one hand, the Russian government plans to sow distrust within the world through disinformation. At the same time you could just be someone trying to cover up something. Stay weary. I'm watching you. All of you. FREEDOM!

Agreeable wrote:

Agreed. At the same time I am weary that you are a shill, so I am reserving judgment in any direction. On one hand, the Russian government plans to sow distrust within the world through disinformation. At the same time you could just be someone trying to cover up something. Stay weary. I'm watching you. All of you. FREEDOM!

Good point, but definitely not a shill. Rupp and Farah, the evidence against is pretty close to damning, without this report. I have always wondered why people have not questioned Jager more, although I have no particular reason to think he'd be doping. WRT Defer, Kiprop, etc., it won't be a huge surprise if the African OOC testing is too light to catch any of them.

Russia is worse than this. Way worse. We shouldn't forget that. At the same time, we're not always great either, and perhaps this report will lend sad evidence in that direction.

If you think American athletes are clean and yet somehow are able to beat all those "dirty" Russians, I have some snake oil to sell you.

Real Cyclist wrote:

If you think American athletes are clean and yet somehow are able to beat all those "dirty" Russians, I have some snake oil to sell you.

Actually, we kind of *didn't* beat them. Russian dopers (at least the women) were pretty wildly successful.

Doesn't anyone remember those years when a bunch of previous-no-names would show up at the Russian trials and run 1:57? And then at Worlds their top couple would always beat our best.

The unfortunate thing is that many of the top Americans have doped. Let's work hard and try to catch them. And the best way to do that is to be clear-headed when something like this happens, and pounce only once we have weighed the evidence

Going to be a sad day when LRC calls out the Schumacher group.,,,,.

Karma.

Bums.

I agree that we should not rush to judgement, sentence and execution on the basis of these leaks. But the problem is that any other form of hard evidence is very hard to come by. As I see it - and you can accuse me of being overly cynical - for an athlete to remain at top level in the sport for a significant period of time three situations are possible.

1) The athlete does not cheat in any way, is 100% clean. I still believe there are such athletes out there.

2) The athlete cheats in such a way as to pass any form of testing/control without ever so much as arousing suspicion. I am no expert in this area but from what I read this seems perfectly possible.

3) The athlete cheats, produces positive or highly suspicious test results but the sport's leadership does nothing. Either for financial reasons (bribes) or a misguided desire to protect the image of the sport positive tests are covered up and the athlete continues to compete as before. There seems to be some evidence (not conclusive by any means) that this has happened. Which is why these leaks are so important.

Salem, MA wrote:

But COME ON!

This was a leaked document from the Russian government, who are known to

3) Sometimes even CHANGE pieces of information in the documents to create conflict.

Do you have any evidence of this happening?

I generally believe that EVERYONE that runs for Nike is doping. I know, I know, it is not everyone, but every new shocker is always a Nike athlete. Salazar group has been suspicious since day 1, but every Nike athlete is questionable. Paula YES and now Bowerman Group.

I think there is pressure from the top.

Huddle, Sisson, Nor Cal, Hansons, Zap, Beasts, NAZ, NYNJ, the Coogan group, all have 2 things in common.

1. Never on any suspicious list.

2. No association with Nike.

One of the most humane and enlightened principles of justice and governance in America is the idea that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Better a guilty person to escape, than an innocent person to wrongly suffer. It is not a principle widely honored on LRC message boards, and it casts a cynical and dark pall over the amateur running community as problematic as doping in the professional community.

Johnny Free wrote:

One of the most humane and enlightened principles of justice and governance in America is the idea that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Better a guilty person to escape, than an innocent person to wrongly suffer. It is not a principle widely honored on LRC message boards, and it casts a cynical and dark pall over the amateur running community as problematic as doping in the professional community.

TL;DNR The "court" of public opinion is not a real court, so it may not need to use the same standards as criminal courts.

I know you know this, but "innocent until proven guilty" is a principle of criminal law. It is equivalent to the requirement that the prosecution prove its case "beyond a reasonable doubt." There are many reasons this make sense in criminal trials. Among other things, the state has far more resources than those it accuses. The presumption of innocence helps correct that imbalance in trials.

It's not so clear that the presumption of innocence is the right standard outside of criminal law. For example, even in the US, other areas of law use lower standards of proof than "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I agree with you that many people here are jumping to conclusions. Their arguments are wrong because they are flimsy -- illogical and poorly supported -- not because they do not meet the standards of criminal law.

How can one tl;dr a post, then produce an even longer post?

Back to the original broadcast.

+1 thank you - Fancy Bear is a Russian hacking operation with an agenda. That agenda is not clean athletics.

Look at Wikileaks for an example - turned out to be a wholly-owned Russian operation and entirely untrustworthy.

I don't believe anything from Fancy Bear without a couple of other independent sources..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_Bear

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has said with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.

Fancy Bear's methods are consistent with the capabilities of nation-state actors. The threat group is known to target government, military, and security organizations, especially Transcaucasian and NATO-aligned states. Fancy Bear is thought to be responsible for cyber attacks on the German parliament, the French television station TV5Monde, the White House, NATO, the Democratic National Committee, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.

The group serves the political interests of the Russian government.

You have no cred to talk about witch hunts when you so easily believe these hackers are Russians. You're an idiot.

Salem, MA wrote:

2) The IAAF to put out a statement confirming/denying the data, maybe with some explanations.

IAAF's statement seems to indicate pretty clearly that the data are not faked.

All I can say is that Dibaba is no doper!