David Epstein: “I don’t know if any sanctions will or won’t come out this…My perception is that a lot of athletes, and especially in track and field, don’t want to have to play the pharmacy games in order to compete”
by LetsRun.com
July 7, 2015
Investigative reporter David Epstein of ProPublica appeared on the House of Run weekly podcast today to talk about the Nike Oregon Project doping investigation and current happenings in the world of track and field.
Epstein was a guest for the first 40 minutes of the podcast which you can listen to/download here.
When asked if he thought it was likely that Alberto Salazar would be sanctioned by the anti-doping authorities, he said “not particularly” and added, “I don’t know if any sanctions will or won’t come out of this. When you don’t have a positive test or law enforcement getting involved liked with Biogensis, I always think it’s always an uphill battle if you don’t have one or two of those things.”
When asked if he had an idea as to how long the USADA investigation would take to conclude, Epstein said he had “no idea” and pointed out that the Tyson Gay/Jon Drummond case took a very long time and that was as an”open and shut case” as “one can get”.
A few other good quotes from Epstein.
On regulating drugs in sport:
“My perception is that a lot of athletes, and especially in track and field, don’t want to have to play the pharmacy games in order to compete, so they’d love to see this stuff regulated and people taking an approach according to the honor code basically where they take (just) what they medically need but that’s not where we are.”
On Evan Jager’s current form:
“It looks to me just from watching him run right now.. it seems to me that we are looking at an athlete who is operating at a level that very few operate on ever in their sport and I think that’s really, really special….It seems to me that he’s going to threaten the World Record.”