Is Salazar and the NOP bigger than Lance was?

No, I just don't think they are cheating as badly as Lance (though I do think they have cheated).

Or, unlike Lance, they didn't do anything against the rules. You have to break the rules before you get nailed, and Salazar never broke the rules. Just ruffled some feathers with his edgy choices of perfectly legal supplements.

Of course not. Lance by himself is bigger than every athlete to ever pass through NOP combined. NOP hasn’t been “caught” because they probably haven’t really done much, if anything; and if they did, nobody really cares.

lance was just like MJ, tiger, etc....a big money earner with and for NIKE, never too big to fall

so why al sal? well my guess is al sal has some sort of deal with phil night.....if al sal ever goes home devestated then he spills whatever beans that he has on phil/nike.....no one else has that pull.

al prob has dirt on scandals, fraud, bribes, child labor, environmental issues, political ties etc

just like how kara has massive dirt on al sal but he shut her up super fast cause he would destroy her. al sal would destroy phil/nike beyond repair...thus he will be protected till the end

cwarcarblue11 wrote:

You have to break the rules before you get nailed, and Salazar never broke the rules.

Lol, okay buddy.

NOP and AlSal are not bigger than Lance was. AlSal and NOP are all about going right up to the line between doping and clean sport and then dancing all over that line. For Lance, the line was bullsh#t because doping was prevalent in cycling. Lance wanted his team's doping program to be the best doping program in cycling. It wasn't about getting an edge by taking a little of this and a little of that. It was about dominating the sport by having a superior doping program and the ability to beat the tests.

I have a feeling that NOP is as grey and on the line as it gets, but have not technically cheated. I would propose that at least one of their athletes went rogue, however; and utilized non Salazar methods that grossly crossed the established line.

NOP bigger than Lance MF Armstrong? Yeah, I don't know what you're smoking, but I don't know a single person outside of the running world that has ever heard of NOP or Salazar.

m!ndweak wrote:

lance was just like MJ, tiger, etc....a big money earner with and for NIKE, never too big to fall

so why al sal? well my guess is al sal has some sort of deal with phil night.....if al sal ever goes home devestated then he spills whatever beans that he has on phil/nike.....no one else has that pull.

al prob has dirt on scandals, fraud, bribes, child labor, environmental issues, political ties etc

just like how kara has massive dirt on al sal but he shut her up super fast cause he would destroy her. al sal would destroy phil/nike beyond repair...thus he will be protected till the end

So Salazar is really the Omarosa Manigault of Nike and has a treasure trove of secret recordings, how exciting.

My guess is Salazar gives his athletes supplements laced with substances that are banned or should be banned that we probably haven't heard of yet.

skylon69 wrote:

They eventually nailed Lance Armstrong. But as of today, the investigations into Salazar/NOP have been going on for three years and five months--no conclusions. Was Lance simply such a prick that Nike was willing to sacrifice him, or is Salazar/NOP so important to Nike that all their resources have gone to protect him and they're hoping to run out the clock? Seems that way.

Ask 100 people on the street if they know the name Lance Armstrong.

Follow up with the question as to if they know Salazar.

You'll get your answer. No one gives a sh1t about things they don't know about. Lance was all over ads, TV, late night, etc. Everyone knew him, so it was a much bigger deal.

skylon69 wrote:

They eventually nailed Lance Armstrong. But as of today, the investigations into Salazar/NOP have been going on for three years and five months--no conclusions. Was Lance simply such a prick that Nike was willing to sacrifice him, or is Salazar/NOP so important to Nike that all their resources have gone to protect him and they're hoping to run out the clock? Seems that way.

I am not sure that Nike sacrificed Lance. They stood by him until the very end.

What got Lance was the number of people who came forward with allegations and testimony directed right at Lance not to mention federal investigators and lawsuits. A few people who were part of the NOP have made allegations but the number of people is far smaller.

I think NOP athletes have certainly gone right up to the very edge as alleged, but at this point it is looking like USADA has a lot of smoke but no fire.

Also, the denials were pointed and they did not follow the Lance model of suing anyone who looked at them sideways.

skylon69 wrote:Was Lance simply such a prick that Nike was willing to sacrifice him,

No, Lance was such a prick that his old teammates sold him out, and they actually gained traction because they admitted their use of drugs alongside him. - something Kara has not decided she is ready to do.

- The "up to the line" stuff is getting everyone diagnosed with hypo-thyroidism, probably because the medication makes it easier to have astonishingly low body fat, which is obviously helpful and a Salazar obsession. Not illegal with a prescription, assuming there wasn't a conspiracy with the doctor to give a prescription to everyone regardless of medical need. Still shady, but I'll give a pass on this one.

- But we pretty much know that NOP violated rules on the use of IVs. Small stuff, sure, but if you're willing to cross one line (not just get close), then there's reason to think you'd cross others.

- And the biggest deal: We also know that Salazar conducted an illegal experiment to determine how much androgel it would take to test positive. We know that he carried androgel on him (offering the implausible justification that it was for his heart). And we know that he sometimes gave Galen rub downs despite having an actual massage therapist who was available to do it. That to me sounds like an extraordinarily high likelihood of heavy-duty doping.

skylon69 wrote:

They eventually nailed Lance Armstrong. But as of today, the investigations into Salazar/NOP have been going on for three years and five months--no conclusions. Was Lance simply such a prick that Nike was willing to sacrifice him, or is Salazar/NOP so important to Nike that all their resources have gone to protect him and they're hoping to run out the clock? Seems that way.

I know who Lance is

I have never heard of this "Salazar/NOP" thing you mention

Let it Rupp wrote:

NOP bigger than Lance MF Armstrong? Yeah, I don't know what you're smoking, but I don't know a single person outside of the running world that has ever heard of NOP or Salazar.

My goodness you're stupid. Lance meant nothing to Phil Knight. Salazer does.

Three years and five months? IIRC, Steve Magness first complained to USADA in Dec. 2012. Around 19 former employees, and athletes came forward to USADA as cooperative witnesses. After a Fancy Bears leak, USADA issued a statement in Feb. 2017 that they were still investigating whether anyone in NOP had actually committed an ADRV. It seems unlikely that Tygart and USADA would hesitate to issue sanctions if they could. They went forward with Lance in spite of death threats, and Congressional threats to cut USADA funding.

skylon69 wrote:

They eventually nailed Lance Armstrong. But as of today, the investigations into Salazar/NOP have been going on for three years and five months--no conclusions. Was Lance simply such a prick that Nike was willing to sacrifice him, or is Salazar/NOP so important to Nike that all their resources have gone to protect him and they're hoping to run out the clock? Seems that way.

Not sure I ever agreed with this kind of "jaywalking is the same as murder" type logic. "pretty much know" means "knowledge", so I have a couple of questions about what we "know". My knowledge of the Fancy Bears leak is getting a little fuzzy. Outside of Magness receiving an infusion of 1 liter over 4 hours, what do we "know" about NOP's use of IVs? I thought the obstacle was that we didn't know the actual amounts of liquid infused, and it was just USADA's strong belief that it had to have exceeded a 50ml limit. Even if that line were crossed, it was clear from Day 1, that Salazar's written instructions to Magness were to find a way to do this "WADA legal, of course". That makes it harder to blame Salazar and NOP. Not to throw Magness under the bus, because he clearly was pressured to do things he was not comfortable with, but what's missing for me in this whole investigation is "knowledge" of an actual ADRV by an actual NOP athlete, as a result of direction by Salazar. This lack of "knowledge" of real ADRVs makes Salazar and NOP very different from Lance and Team Postal.

800 dude wrote:

- But we pretty much know that NOP violated rules on the use of IVs. Small stuff, sure, but if you're willing to cross one line (not just get close), then there's reason to think you'd cross others.

They went over the line on numerous occasions, including the 50ml infusion limit and being coached to fake symptoms of hypothyroidism.

^This. As long as Goucher et al. don't admit that they were doped under Salazar, nothing will happen.

Remember that USADA did nothing about Armstrong before the Feds, though witnesses came forward as early as ten years before that. Plus, Armstrong passed all USADA OOC tests.

So comparing the timelines of these two cases, the current NOP scenario is now somewhere where Armstrong was around 2006.

In any case, we did learn that Salazar is outright dishonest (e.g., by instructing his athletes to lie to USADA) and does not shy away from breaking laws (e.g., see Grunewald, shipping drugs in hollow books across the border, dispensing subscription drugs to his athletes, giving testo to his son). So please NOP fans, stop pretending that Salazar is too honest to break rules.

We also found out that of the four "likely doping" Americans in early 2016, two were from NOP, namely their best distance runners. And we learned about Rupp's (!) suspicious testo spike while in marathon training.

1) Who increases his testo suddenly while in deep marathon training?

2) 2 out of 4 - what a "coincidence"!

3) Definition of "likely doping":