The Salazar Rumors, Part 1: The BBC Report in Context

Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar

Yesterday, the BBC and Sports Gene writer David Epstein released articles connecting Alberto Salazar to systemic doping of his athletes. Seven of Salazar's former associates--ranging from athletes to assistant coaches--spoke to the reporters about their experiences with the Salazar-headed Nike Oregon Project (NOP). The BBC article can be read here and Epstein's in-depth piece can be read here.

This is Part 1 in a two-part series on this story. Part 1 will be written under the assumption that Salazar et al. are clean as a whistle and Part 2 will be written assuming they are dirty as all sin. In each part, I will go through the various claims and defend them for the perspective of that respective part. I will then leave it up to the reader what to believe--I try not to make judgments on this blog, preferring to deal with what we know.

If some of the arguments in either part seem non-rational, they very well could be. I'm writing what I would say if I were defending either side and will leave out details that don't help my argument.

The format of the post will be simple: I'll pull bits from Epstein's story and respond to them one by one.

"USADA's public testing data, however, shows Rupp was drug-tested 28 times in 2013, the most of any American athlete, and 11 more times than the previous year. (Rupp has never failed a drug test.)"
Twenty-eight tests in one year is a test everything 13 days. That's a high level of testing, and Rupp passed without a single problem.

"Salazar was able to entice some of these athletes not just with his name, but with all that Nike's budget could provide: specialized coaches for strength and conditioning and sports psychology, masseuses, personalized lab tests, altitude tents, a 'Space Cabin' cryo-chamber, even an underwater treadmill."
The NOP has the best resources in the world available to its athletes. Athletes coming to Salazar and dropping time is a product of good coaching and taking better care of their bodies. Nike, in effect, has unlimited money, so any new piece of technology Salazar thinks will help his runners, he'll get it, regardless of the cost.

"In a 1999 speech at Duke University, he said that he believed it's difficult 'to be among the top five in the world in any of the distance events without using EPO or human growth hormone.' He said that his own 'desire to win' would be 'very hard to ignore in the current age where many athletes feel it is impossible to be competitive against the best in the world without doping.'"
Okay, this doesn't look good for AlSal on the surface, but it was the 90s--long before any sort of effective testing for blood boosters or HGH was even thought of. WADA wasn't even formed yet. With today's testing, clean athletes can once again be competitive.

Galen Rupp celebrating his silver medal in the
10000m at the 2012 Olympics

Rupp allegedly took prednisone without a TUE in 2011 because of asthma issues, and Steve Magness was instructed to take Rupp's urine to the Mayo Clinic for testing. Sounds suspicious, but Salazar and Rupp have an answer:
"In his email, Salazar says Rupp had an asthma flare up and there was not enough time to get a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE. The testing was to ensure the medication was completely out of his system. In a separate email, Rupp says if he has 'used a medicine that is permitted out-of-competition but is only permitted in competition with a TUE, then I will not compete in a race unless I have received a TUE or I am certain the substance is no longer in me.' Rupp adds that he has had asthma and severe allergies since childhood, 'long before I met Alberto,' and, 'at all times, my medical treatment has been for health reasons.'"

Magness one day was told to look through Rupp's lab test history:
"When Magness came to a page charting Rupp's hemoglobin, he was stunned to find a note that corresponded to a date when Rupp was still in high school: 'presently on prednisone and testosterone medication.' Magness already knew Rupp used prednisone, but various testosterone medications comprise perhaps the greatest scourge in all of sports doping, and are strictly banned save for cases of extreme medical need."
Salazar's response was that the doctor was, "'crazy and he must be mixing it up with something else.' Salazar told [Magness] they should immediately send the documents to the lab to get the matter cleared up....In emails, both Salazar and Rupp say that Rupp has never taken testosterone or any testosterone medication. Salazar says the notation was incorrect and actually referred to a nutritional supplement called Testoboost that Rupp was taking 'in an effort to counterbalance the negative effects of prednisone.' Testoboost, he says, is a 'legal supplement' that Rupp has disclosed to USADA whenever applicable.
What else do you need to know? Elite level athletes are fine tuned machines, and medication for pre-existing conditions can throw them off. Rupp told doping agencies what he was doing and it was legal.

Rupp getting Withrown'd at the 2003 Footlocker Nationals

"In the coming months, a second situation led Magness to question how Salazar was using testosterone, a controlled substance that is illegal without an appropriate prescription. Magness says he shared an office cubicle at Nike with Salazar's son, Alex, who helped work out the team budget. Alex was occasionally used as a guinea pig to test supplements and then get evaluated in the lab. In one instance, Magness says Alex told him that he was testing testosterone gel: rubbing some on, getting tested in the lab, rubbing some more on, getting tested in the lab. Magness and another Oregon Project athlete separately say the reason Salazar gave for the testing was to determine how much of the gel it would take to trigger a positive test in case a rival attempted to sabotage an Oregon Project athlete by furtively rubbing it on one of them at a race."
This sounds like an extreme case of paranoia, but it isn't that farfetched. Ever since he was in high school, many fans and competitors did not like Rupp. He was perceived to be a rich kid with an altitude tent and a private coach (Rupp's parents actually weren't that rich). There were numerous questions surrounding his eligibility at the University of Oregon and that he might perhaps be later compensated by Nike for the years he missed running professionally by running for UO. So, someone out to get Rupp wouldn't be that surprising. People always relish the downfall of those who are successful.


Further, there might be precedent for drug testing sabotage. Ben Johnson speculates that his beer in the pee room at the 1988 Olympics might have been spiked by one of Carl Lewis's teammates (Johnson claims he tested positive for a stanozolol, which he didn't take, preferring furazabol because stanozolol made him feel tight--for more on this, watch 30 for 30: 9.79*).

"In 2008, John Stiner was a massage therapist working on Oregon Project athletes at their altitude camp in Utah when, he says, Salazar called him with a special request.
The athletes had left the camp, and he wanted Stiner to clean up the condo and ship some items to him. Then, Salazar surprised Stiner. 'He said to me, 'I don't want you to get the wrong idea',' Stiner recalls. 'And he goes, 'There's a tube of Androgel in the bedroom, and it's under some clothing.' ' Androgel is testosterone medication prescribed for men who aren't producing enough testosterone naturally. According to Stiner, Salazar told him: 'It's for my heart, it's all fucked up.'" The reporters later spoke with several cardiologists who said prescribing testosterone for a heart problem would be unorthodox.
Plenty of middle aged men take testosterone medication for "low T". While I'm not a middle aged man and I don't have low T, I imagine it is a bit embarrassing. As such, it's easier for Salazar to lie and say it was for his well-documented heart problems rather than admit to having low T. As far as why couldn't Stiner just throw out the bottle and Salazar just get a refill, you don't know who's going through your trash at a place like this. Easier to avoid any questions or possible investigations by simply recovering the medication.

"At the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, Kara Goucher was in a taxi with a U.S.A. Track and Field official when she says Salazar called the official, fuming that a U.S. doctor had declined to give Rupp an IV. She says Salazar insisted he would go to a British doctor instead." Rupp was later given the drip by purportedly lying to a doctor.
Saline drips don't have any performance enhancing benefits. If having one would ease Rupp's mind, what's the big deal? It's just a placebo. Being denied the drip in the first place was a little ridiculous.

"What Kara Goucher experienced—essentially Salazar's self-appointed doctoring—violates the rules of the sport, not to mention prescription drug laws, but the Gouchers readily admit they have no smoking gun testifying to the kind of doping most familiar in distance running: blood doping and testosterone use. Still, Kara is deeply suspicious. 'I had a conversation with Galen in 2011 in the British training camp [at the World Championships] in Daegu,' she says, 'and he told me how tired he was and how exhausted he was, how he was so excited to have the season be over.' Three weeks later, Rupp broke the American 10K record.
'You don't get to the end of a long year burnt out and take two weeks off and come out and run the best race of your life," she says. 'That's not how it works. You have to rest. You have to recover. You have to start all over again.'"
Salazar is the best coach in the world and Nike gives him all necessary legal means to help his athletes succeed. Three weeks is more time than one might think to recover. Some much needed rest could have been all Rupp needed to get out and tear up the track. Sometimes the coach knows what the athlete is feeling better than the athlete himself. For a coach like Salazar, this is probable.

What we have hear is bunch of pieced-together circumstantial evidence. None of it would hold up in a court of law. All the allegations can be easily refuted by members of the Nike and the NOP.