"grey area" with Alberto is the equivalent of "masking agent" .
"grey area" with Alberto is the equivalent of "masking agent" .
Raddison wrote:
Unfortunately in this world there are three types of people: Those that follow the rules, those who break the rules and those who look for loopholes in the rules. The third group are the problem.
No matter what the rules are there will be people who look for creative interpretations of the rules to try to give them an edge over the competition. These people are lauded as both heroes and crooks. People love success and are willing to turn a blind eye to how it is achieved. People who express criticize are labeled as haters. In some cases the individual takes one step too far and the whole house of cards collapses (Ben Johnson) but in many cases that doesn't happen and the rule bending becomes systemic and the supporters justify it because 'everyone does it' or 'it's just leveling the playing field' (Lance Armstrong*, Alberto Salazar).
Unfortunately, this obsession with operating in the grey areas affects other aspects of our lives. In 2000 the former Enron CFO, Andrew Fastow, was named CFO of the year. In 2002 Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire and securities fraud, and agreed to serve a ten-year prison sentence. Despite the downfall of Enron and the conviction of several of its executives the financial industry still loved the grey areas. By 2008 they were into subprime mortgages and we all know how that ended.
* I know Lance Armstrong was eventually busted but that was only after he confessed to Oprah Winfrey in 2013, almost a decade after his Tour de France years
How entitled and fair is your life that you do not take advantage of your loopholes?
Do you apply for jobs blindly, or do you use your friends and connections? Do you think race, sex, ... do not give you huge advantages and disadvantages in different markets, and do you not play along those advantages? I know 0 successful people in any capacity who do not take advantage of these kinds of things. Do you have fair, consistent and firm political positions, or do you pay off and pay your dues to everyone in power so you keep and have advantages?
I am not saying cheat on exams or steal others' work. small stuff. loopholes. grey area. Do pushups for a pump just before you walk out the door for your date. Subtle makeup for women. Dying your hair. Speeding when appropriate. Overinflating your resume when selling something.
Have you met MBAs? They have 1/100 the skills of specialists and sell themselves like they are 100x as knowledgeable. Have you met politicians? They highlight their best work that they had so much help on and spent so much time preparing to make them look like geniuses. "Yes, Mr. Weinstein is a very talented man. I would be honored to work with him."
I know very few people who do not take advantage of things like this. Would you prefer not exploiting advantages over poor Asian job market candidates? Get real. Everyone takes whatever unfair advantages are possible.
Lance was not using loopholes. Soccer players winding up the ref exaggerating everything are. We are talking about the grey area.
Flat Stanley wrote:
Agree that taking all that stuff, thyroid meds, asthma meds, L Carnitine, Testo boost or testosterone etc is not something i'd ever do for both ethical reasons and health reasons. In terms of health thyroid stuff and steroids is particularly worrying.
Glad Al Sal is banned. Good riddance. What is hypocritical though is people judging which athletes are dirty based on personal like or dislike for them rather than what the evidence shows. Look at Ritz 12:56, 60:00, 2:07 whilst in the group but he gets a pass. He knew what he was doing was at the least very borderline but he still went ahead and did it. Ryan Hall and various others from other groups used Doctor Brown for thyroid and other meds and that is all ok (nothing to see here) but everyone hates Rupp and Farah (both, especially Farah almost certainly dirty so not excusing them) because of personal dislike for them.
I also find it a bit odd that people would join that group with all the accusations flowing around over the years. On the other hand if Al Sal was told he was to be banned in 2017 the scrutiny on his training group over the last couple of years while all the legal stuff was going on must have been huge. It's unlikely they are going to breach any more rules so I think it unlikely the current athletes, especially the ones coached by Julian have broken any rules. Someone like Simpson taking cheap shots at Hassan for joining the group is a bit much. If you were doping it is probably the last place you would want to go at the moment with all the attention on them. The people who are more suspect are the ones there before 2015 when the documentary was shown. That includes Rupp, Centro, Goucher, Ritz, Farah and all the rest. Don't pick and choose because of personalities or because they spoke to USADA to cover their backs.
Then there is the weird situation where Lets Run hero worship Ethiopians and Kenyans when those are the places that the real PED use is going on. Ethiopia in particular has virtually no testing, is not a functioning democracy and is exactly the sort of place a state sponsored doping program (or at least state turning a blind eye) would work (think eastern block countries in the past). Al Sal is small fry compared to what is going on in other parts of the world but there is an obsession with him, Rupp and Farah. Athletes setting world records and amazing times in the middle of the EPO era with little to no testing are GOATS by lets run logic but Rupp is the devil incarnate. Makes me laugh.
G.P.O.A.T.
So glad someone said it! Every professional runner today is taking some sort of Supplement to either help them recover faster, improve hydration, or something that would ultimately give them a slight edge. Everyone is riding that fine line of what is acceptable under the current rules. It's kind of like Tax law of the 21st century. If I play by the rules and apply for deductions that are unknown to most (loopholes) and walk away paying no taxes or receive a refund, I was just playing by the current rules. To the world though, I cheated the system.
get_real wrote:
Raddison wrote:
Unfortunately in this world there are three types of people: Those that follow the rules, those who break the rules and those who look for loopholes in the rules. The third group are the problem.
No matter what the rules are there will be people who look for creative interpretations of the rules to try to give them an edge over the competition. These people are lauded as both heroes and crooks. People love success and are willing to turn a blind eye to how it is achieved. People who express criticize are labeled as haters. In some cases the individual takes one step too far and the whole house of cards collapses (Ben Johnson) but in many cases that doesn't happen and the rule bending becomes systemic and the supporters justify it because 'everyone does it' or 'it's just leveling the playing field' (Lance Armstrong*, Alberto Salazar).
Unfortunately, this obsession with operating in the grey areas affects other aspects of our lives. In 2000 the former Enron CFO, Andrew Fastow, was named CFO of the year. In 2002 Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire and securities fraud, and agreed to serve a ten-year prison sentence. Despite the downfall of Enron and the conviction of several of its executives the financial industry still loved the grey areas. By 2008 they were into subprime mortgages and we all know how that ended.
* I know Lance Armstrong was eventually busted but that was only after he confessed to Oprah Winfrey in 2013, almost a decade after his Tour de France years
How entitled and fair is your life that you do not take advantage of your loopholes?
Do you apply for jobs blindly, or do you use your friends and connections? Do you think race, sex, ... do not give you huge advantages and disadvantages in different markets, and do you not play along those advantages? I know 0 successful people in any capacity who do not take advantage of these kinds of things. Do you have fair, consistent and firm political positions, or do you pay off and pay your dues to everyone in power so you keep and have advantages?
I am not saying cheat on exams or steal others' work. small stuff. loopholes. grey area. Do pushups for a pump just before you walk out the door for your date. Subtle makeup for women. Dying your hair. Speeding when appropriate. Overinflating your resume when selling something.
Have you met MBAs? They have 1/100 the skills of specialists and sell themselves like they are 100x as knowledgeable. Have you met politicians? They highlight their best work that they had so much help on and spent so much time preparing to make them look like geniuses. "Yes, Mr. Weinstein is a very talented man. I would be honored to work with him."
I know very few people who do not take advantage of things like this. Would you prefer not exploiting advantages over poor Asian job market candidates? Get real. Everyone takes whatever unfair advantages are possible.
Lance was not using loopholes. Soccer players winding up the ref exaggerating everything are. We are talking about the grey area.
I think you missed the point of my post. Of course there are grey areas and people operate in them, usually without any problems. But the grey area is not a singularity, rather it is a continuum, you start in the white, keep moving across and eventually you are in the black. It is almost impossible to know when you have crossed the line.
You quoted speeding as an example and it is a good one. Where I live the speed limit is 100 km/hr. If you drive at 101 km/hr you will never get a ticket. But if you drive at 125 km/hr you will. So where is the threshold where you cross from grey to black? Well it depends on the cop and also the conditions. Doing 112 on an empty road in broad daylight will probably get a pass. Whereas 112 on a busy day with rain and poor visibility will probably get you pulled over. Smart people can usually calibrate themselves to avoid crossing over - but there are always the jerks. With speeding usually they are the only ones who suffer, in the form of a ticket, unless they cause an accident.
In the financial world it is a bit different. There these people are playing with other peoples money. They may eventually go down but when they do a lot of innocent people get taken down with them in the form of lost savings.
Most people don't deliberately set out to do something illegal but get caught up in the event and just push the boundary a little bit further. Each time the boundary moves there are all sorts of justifications for it until eventually you are hoping for a miracle to occur which will make everything OK . Invariably it does not, and you find you are adrift on the wrong side of the law.
I witnessed just such an event. The company I worked for got fined $75 million over export control issues. Everything started completely innocently with an opportunity to get into a major market. Then little things happened, then more little things, until eventually executives were panicking over the mess they had found themselves in and hoping that a miracle would happen to save them. It didn't.
Most people are smart enough to know how far into the grey zone they can go. But there are idiots who don't and assume the rules don't apply to them. Usually they crash and burn before they can do any real damage, but occasionally they get into a position where their actions have major repercussions. Also there are good people who get caught up in the excitement of the event and fail to realize just how far outside the rules they have gone. In many cases they are in a tougher situation, the internal politics in my company often revolved around the saying, "Whatever you agreed to on Monday becomes the starting point for negotiations on Tuesday."
I would define the grey area as taking substances that are not on the WADA banned list, but are pushing the limit of what should be allowed (stuff like l-carnitine drinks, caffeine, beta alanine, actovegin, ketone, and creatine). What Sleazy Sal did WAS illegal per WADA rules (giving athletes l-carnitine infusions and testosterone), so he was no longer in the grey zone, but doping.
RIP: D3 All-American Frank Csorba - who ran 13:56 in March - dead
RENATO can you talk about the preparation of Emile Cairess 2:06
Great interview with Steve Cram - says Jakob has no chance of WRs this year
Running for Bowerman Track Club used to be cool now its embarrassing
Hats off to my dad. He just ran a 1:42 Half Marathon and turns 75 in 2 months!
2024 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion