Ritzenhein finally speaks out and says USADA made right call to ban Salazar: "I stand behind the findings of the panel."

Zat0pek wrote:

fking hell wrote:

"but he's never missed a drug test"

THAT'S THE POINT, YOU FVCKING IDIOTS

Did you read ANY of the information that has come out? Yeah, I wonder why he never tested positive when the nike lab was doing regular testing of hormomone levels ALL THE TIME.

Ever hear about a guy named Victor Conte? The guy who ran a huge doping scheme and famously said, "The dopers are always ahead of the testers?"

Yeah, wonder why he never tested positive. I wonder why Marion Jones never tested positive either.

Ever hear about the positive tests that get swept under the rug?

Jesus, you have to willingly be blind to all of this to maintain the level of ignorance y'all have. People like Zat0pek have been trying to tell you this stuff for years and you never listen

People just can't wrap their heads around the fact that the cheaters are (almost) always ahead of the testers. Athletes, coaches, managers, doctors, shoe companies (well, one at least), and others all over the world are constantly seeking the latest/greatest PED because they ALL make money on it. Why does Nike have a lab and multiple buildings named after drug cheats? Because it's profitable. Drug cheats run faster, jump higher/further, throw further and are a lot of fun to watch. EVERYBODY connected to them profits - that athletes get bigger contracts so the agent's cut is bigger. People tune it to watch and it drives up sales and ad revenue. It takes a long to time to discover what they're using and develop a test for it. And once they do have a test, there's a host of ways to beat it.

That's why all the records from the '90s and early 2000s are a total farce - there wasn't even a test for EPO and everyone knew it. It was the lawless, wild, wild west when it came to the most potent endurance PED ever discovered. It's still around even with the test (microdosing, etc.) but the risk of getting caught is still slight. Throwing a positive test usually means someone made a mistake.

I've posted it (here and TrackTalk) before but here it is one more time:

I competed in track and cross-country for two different universities, one NAIA and the other NCAA DI in a BCS conference and I practiced law for 24 years. I had a law school classmate who after graduation went to work for the NCAA as an investigator. Later he worked directly for the NFL, and then went to work for two NFL franchises. Through a combination of both my sport and my profession, I have been very fortunate to get to know a good number of world-class and professional athletes in a variety of different sports. Because of my profession, I am regularly provided a large amount of information because those giving it to me know that it is privileged and cannot be divulged. So, in this summary don’t expect many details or names because you won’t get any. Rather, I will distill and explain more generally my understanding of the subject into a few main principles. In a separate post, I will provide a few selected examples not as anecdotal evidence but rather as examples or illustrations of the concept.

Here goes:

Principle #1: The cheaters are (almost) always ahead of the testers. The hardest thing for people to understand is that negative test results truly don’t mean a thing. They really don’t. Whether or not an athlete has never tested positive is absolutely, completely and totally irrelevant. Marion Jones passed 162 drug tests during a period of time when she was using a designer steroid, EPO and HGH. I have seen guys take the medicine chest one day and test clean the next. The multiple reasons for this (use of undetectable substances, masking agents, cycling the drug use, pre-testing and monitoring done by sponsors or even governing bodies to assist with avoiding detection, etc.) are many and beyond the scope of this simple post.

Just like in the BALCO scandal, there are labs who create undetectable drugs for the sole purpose of evading testing. Remember, in BALCO the only way the designer steroid that Regina Jacobs and many others were using was discovered was because a syringe containing a tiny amount of the drug was provided to WADA. From there, they created a test and went back and tested previously tested samples that had been frozen and preserved. Had it not been for Trevor Graham providing that syringe, we still wouldn’t know about that designer steroid. You can rest assured that there are other substances out there that were created for exactly the same purpose that we still don’t know exist, and may never know exist.

The key point to understand here is that when someone tests positive, that is the exception not the rule. The rule is that it is normal and ordinary for drug cheats to test negative. A positive test usually results from either absolute stupidity or just sheer bad luck. It is critical that you understand this. As the saying goes, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Principle #2: Doped up athletes are good for business.

Doped up athletes run faster, jump higher, set records, perform more consistently, defy the aging process and are generally more exciting to watch. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if doped up athletes are more exciting to watch and attract more fans, TV viewers, and revenue, then those who profit from that increased revenue are more than willing to, at the very least, turn a blind eye to doping but are far more likely to even participate in, and possibly even encourage, the doping and avoiding detection. This includes everyone from the athletes themselves to the governing bodies to sponsors to the media to agents to sponsors and even teammates and spouses.

The motives to dope are many and large. Agents work on a commission, so a bigger contract for the athlete means a bigger commission for the agent. One way to get a bigger contract is to perform better and one of the most certain ways to perform better is to dope. Pro teams make money by selling tickets and through TV contracts. If you want to sell more tickets and attract more eyeballs to more TV sets, then doped athletes will unquestionably help your bottom line. I could go on and on.

Principle #3: You should never be surprised by who tests positive.

The most surprising thing about a positive test is that someone actually slipped up and got caught. However, as to who that someone is there should be no surprise. The reason for that is that the incidence of drug use is so high and the risk of detection is so low. The high probability of any one athlete out of a population of athletes with a very high incidence of drug use simply means that you cannot be surprised when someone turns out to be a drug cheat. Negative tests mean nothing, and activism against drug use means nothing. That said, while no one can be above suspicion because the incidence of drug use is so high, there are certainly those who are suspected more than others (see Principle #5 below).

The very best quote I’ve ever seen regarding this point was by KevinM when he said in reference to Floyd Landis that “When the Amish kid tests positive, no one can be above suspicion.”

Principle #4: Cheaters are extremely skilled liars

There are a lot of reasons for this. Many truly do not believe they’re doing anything wrong because “everybody does it” and they are surrounded by people supporting and protecting them in their drug use. It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg question; do they only lie after beginning to cheat or is it because they are liars that they cheat? I’ve never fully answer that one to my satisfaction. All I know for sure is the drug cheats are some of the most magnificently skilled liars I’ve ever encountered.

Principle #5: I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.

When you’ve had a peek inside that world, you learn that otherwise very subtle or innocuous things can mean a great deal. There often isn’t any one telltale sign of cheating, although there can be (like Lagat’s braces, acquired in his late 30s despite previously having previously flawless teeth; a prominent sign of HGH use). It’s usually a combination of a variety of factors, including competition patterns, performances, the company they keep, and a lot of other things. It’s usually not one thing, but rather an overall picture that emerges based on a myriad of factors. You cannot simplistically look at performances and know who doped and who doesn’t. Performances are just one of many factors that paint picture.

Principle #6: Logic means nothing , and everything.

This is the part that most people can’t get past. They apply logic to PEDs (“it doesn’t make sense that they would use PEDs because . . .”) PED use doesn’t conform to our logic. A lot of human behavior defies logic. If logic governed human behavior, all we’d have to do is point out to an alcoholic that drinking that much is ruining their life and they’d stop. I know this sounds nuts, but logic and what makes “sense” or “adds up” will get you nowhere in understanding the world of PEDs. It ain’t about logic. It’s a special kind of warped behavior with its own rules and sick rationalizations.

But on the other hand, logic is everything. To the athletes and the enablers with which they are surrounded, it is only logical to use if “everyone’s doing it”, it helps them make more money, there is very little chance of detection, etc.

In the world of PEDs, you can believe very little of what you see. It’s a world that operates on its own sick rationalizations that are foreign to the vast majority of people on the outside looking in at that world. There’s always a wizard or two behind the curtain creating an illusion for those looking in so they don’t see the reality. In the world of PEDs, what you see is often nothing more than the dazzling special effects of a great sci-fi movie; it looks fantastic, but it's just not real.

Let's get to the bottom of this wrote:

That's some really good information by Zat0pek. Funny thing though, I brought up some of these points with rekrunner before particularly Zat0pek's Principle #1: "The cheaters are (almost) always ahead of the testers" & Principle #2: "Doped up athletes are good for business," only for rekrunner to get contemptuous with me and dismiss it as "logical fallacy" or "belief" or any of those weird catch phrases he uses often.

I noticed how he hasn't challenged and criticized Zat0pek's comments but he feels it's imperative to question my comments on the same basic platform of information (I'm not trying to bait rekrunner into debating Zat0pek - just wondering why he challenges some posters and not others on the same basic information being presented). My only guess is that Zat0pek mentioned he had practiced law for 24 yrs and I recall rekrunner stating in a previous post is that he is a "student of the law" - so maybe it's some kind of professional courtesy with him. ?

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

False again. For someone who argues that EPO has had no significant effect on elite African performances to your estimating that doping in top marathon runners is scarcely existent and your presumption that negative tests mean an athlete should be considered clean your views are consistently the antithesis of those presented by ZatOpek. You are on different sides of the trenches.

Zat0pek made general statements about the "world of PEDs", not singling out EPO's impact on elite African performances or prevalence of suspicious blood samples among world champion and Olympic marathon medal winners.

His listed principles are highly consistent with my expressed views that the belief in doping among athletes/coaches is high, leading to a high prevalence, and sophisticated ways to hide doping.

His weakest principle is "#5 I can’t define it but I know it when I see it" due to its complete subjectivity risking that the uninformed observer sees what they want.

Principle #6 says the decision to dope is not logic based. What alternatives are there to logic? Religion? Mythology?