The Salazar Rumors, Part 2: Lance would be proud

This is Part 2 in a two-part series on the recent reports from the BBC and ProPublica about alleged doping by Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project (NOP). Part 1 is written assuming innocence and Part 2 is written assuming guilt. I recommend reading Part 1 (and, if you're feeling ambitious, at least one of the two reports) prior to reading this post.

Admittedly, this piece was more fun to write than the innocence piece, as I get let my mind run wild with speculation. I am not making any judgment; just trying to present the argument from both sides.

Without further ado...

Salazar and Beardsley in the Duel in the Sun

"'He is sort of a win-at-all-costs person and it's hurting the sport,' says Kara Goucher, the nation's most prominent female distance runner. She left the Oregon Project in 2011, after seven years."
When he was still competing, Salazar almost ran himself to death twice: once in 1978 at the Falmouth Road Race when he even had his last rites read, and again in the 1982 Boston Marathon (known as the "Duel in the Sun") when he opted not to drink any water during the course of the race. Salazar brings that same mentality to his coaching philosophy, doing whatever it takes to finish first.

"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.)"
Lance Armstrong passed 275 drug tests. Marion Jones was clean for 162 drug tests (in 2006 she tested positive for EPO but her B came back negative). Many other dopers went their entire athletic careers without testing positive for something. Point is, just because you don't fail a test doesn't mean you're clean. The list of dirty athletes who have passed all of their drug tests is a lot longer than the list of dirty athletes who failed one.

"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.'"
We already covered Salazar's need to win; this is further proof. He's basically admitting that if he were competing in the late 90s, he would have doped up to be competitive. There is no evidence that his mind set has changed.

"International anti-doping rules allow for expedited (and even retroactive) exemptions when acute medical problems need treatment, but Salazar and Rupp were unable to procure an exemption, Magness says. Rupp took the medication anyway, and while he flew ahead to Germany, Magness was directed by Salazar to fly to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to have a bottle of Rupp's urine tested. 'They did that to see if it tested positive,' Magness says. 'I hand-carried Galen's urine through the airport, onto the plane, and into my rental car and drove to this clinic and dropped it off, and that was it.' He never learned the result of the test."
So Rupp didn't get a TUE, took his meds anyways, and sent Magness to Minnesota to see if his pee came back hot. If it did, Rupp probably wouldn't have run the race, as he might be subject to a drug test. Even though prednisone can be used legally with a TUE, taking it without exemption is a violation of doping code. Also, why did they have to go to the Mayo Clinic specifically? Is there a crooked doctor or lab tech there who would test Rupp's urine for whatever Salazar wanted? Why not just do it at Nike?

Reasonable explanation?

"Magness then flew to Dusseldorf to meet Rupp prior to the race. Soon after he arrived, Rupp told him he wasn't feeling well. Magness called Salazar, who he says told him to expect a package. Two days later, a box arrived at his hotel room. Inside it he found a paperback thriller. Confused, he flipped it open. A section of the pages had been hollowed out to form a compartment into which two pills were taped. 'At that point,' Magness says, 'my mind was like, this is stuff you see in movies, this is extremely strange.' He handed the pills to Rupp, who he says promptly swallowed them and laughed off the clandestine packaging as typical Salazar antics. Magness, who had been on the job less than two months, says he never asked what the pills were. At the end of the week, Rupp placed fourth in the 5K in Germany. Neither Salazar nor Rupp responded to questions about the hollowed-out book containing pills."
Magness is right: this is movie-grade stuff. If nothing illegal were going on, why bother with the theatrics? Sending something Shawshank style raises more questions about what's going on, even if the book only contained vitamin C pills or omega-3 fatty acids.

"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.'"
Fairly certain that's still cheating. Let's use an example: Adderall is, as best as I can tell, only banned during the competition season. Adderall is definitely a performance enhancing drug--just ask any MLB player. The effects on a distance runner would be less pronounced than on a sprinter, but it'll help. If Rupp used Adderall without a TUE, that would be problem. I don't see why this is any different.

"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."
Uhhhhhh....WHAT? Someone explain to me why Rupp was on testosterone as a 16 year old. Please, has anyone come across a sixteen year old boy who needed more testosterone? If Rupp had a legitimate hormone deficiency, he would not have been able to compete at a high level. He wouldn't have been able to compete at all. I've actually seen what this looks like, and it isn't good. So, either Rupp somehow had a hormone deficiency that was severe enough to warrant therapy but not severe enough to hinder performance or Salazar was doping him in high school. If the latter is the case, we're dealing with some seriously messed up stuff. It's one thing for a high schooler to go out and get steroids by himself because he wants to look good at the beach; it's a whole different ballgame to have a professional coach give a high schooler testosterone.

I would actually be interested in what the OSAA's (Oregon's high school sports governing body) PED policy looked like in 2002 and see if testosterone was banned. This also makes me wonder if we aren't getting the whole story on the recent Mary Cain story of her going back to New York and a rumored break-up with Salazar (the NOP denies any such break-up).

For what it's worth, Salazar's explanation for this issue is the doctor who wrote the chart screwed up and didn't know what he was doing. I dismiss this as a rational explanation. As Magness said, "It's like, well, you're still taking advice from [Doctor Myhre], so why now all of a sudden is he crazy?"

"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. 'It seemed ludicrous,' Magness says. He believes 'it was them trying to figure out how to cheat the tests...So it's how much can we take without triggering a positive.'"
This is exactly what Magness says: seeing how much you can take before you come back hot. It's called microdosing and it's highly illegal. More concerning is that a lab at Nike a. was testing for testosterone doping on its campus without reporting anything, b. that they have the capabilities to, depending on the type of test, test for testosterone doping (if it's a simple T/E test, this isn't concerning; if it's a test to identify exogenous testosterone, there's a problem), and c. he was using his own son as a lab rat. That might be more messed up than doping a 16 year old Rupp.

"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.'"
As noted later in the story, testosterone is dangerous for heart patients, so Salazar is lying from the get go. I can see Salazar calling the masseur to clear the air on anything questionable, but why not just have him throw it out in a dumpster away from the house? For someone who claims to be as paranoid as Salazar is, leaving testosterone meds in a training house is a pretty big oversight.

Not really related, but the story notes that Salazar and Rupp shared a room in the house. That seems weird to me. I love my coaches, but if I'm at a training camp, I'd want some time away from them.

"'I did a blood test at Nike,' the runner says. He says he was told his 'thyroid was low and testosterone was low.' He says that Myhre suggested he go get thyroid hormone and testosterone from a doctor that Salazar sent athletes to. Myhre, he says, assured him, 'This is what Alberto does. You'll feel better and you'll be able to train better.' 
The runner says he then questioned whether it was cheating, to which he says Myhre told him, 'Well no, I mean Alberto does it.'
The runner asked whether taking testosterone would cause a positive test, and recalls Myhre said: 'No. No. No. We'll get you into the normal range.'"
Normal range for who? Everyone is different. I could have less testosterone than Fritz, but if I dope up to his level, it's still cheating. This sounds eerily reminiscent of cyclists doping their hematocrit up to 49--a legal number, but the method by which they got there was legal. For more, read Tyler Hamilton's book, A Secret Race, and do some Googling about Dr. Michele Ferrari.

"Giving low doses of testosterone, a process known as 'micro-dosing,' is often justified as simply boosting someone up to normal or optimal levels. But even small doses can aid muscle building and recovery from workouts, as well as promote the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. And micro-dosing—a technique that owes its fame to Lance Armstrong—has bedeviled anti-doping organizations because it is difficult to detect."
Yup. Explains the use of Salazar's son as guinea pig, doesn't it?

Decker at the 1996 Olympic Trials

"In 1996, Salazar was coaching American running legend Mary Decker when she tested positive for high levels of testosterone. Decker, who had been a teen phenom—she still holds three American records—was then 37, and had just qualified for the 5K at the Atlanta Olympics. Both denied wrongdoing at the time."
There is reason to be suspicious of supposedly clean athletes with coaches who have had other athletes test positive. It's hard to imagine that a coach would have one subset of athletes be clean and another subset be dirty. So, this is another strike against Salazar and Rupp.

Decker had a T/E greater than 6:1. That's not natural.

"At the 2013 World Championships, he told the Telegraph: 'None of our athletes are on any sports-specific supplement other than beta alanine, which is an amino acid. Other than that, it's iron, vitamin D and that's it. You don't really need anything else.' One former Oregon Project athlete provided ProPublica with the labels of supplements Salazar recommended—all prior to his statement to the Telegraph—ranging from a product claiming to boost natural production of growth hormone, to one that listed the main ingredients as chemical formulas that scientists who later examined the label for ProPublica couldn't decipher."
Part 1: So why are you shipping iron in a hallowed out book?
Part 2: Please justify the list of recommend supplements, which to me looks like a GNC catalog.

"Five months after she gave birth to Colt in 2010, Salazar was unhappy about Goucher's weight, she says. Salazar had previously recommended that several female runners he deemed overweight take over-the-counter supplements marketed as fat-burners. But for Goucher, he had something different in mind. 'You need to just take some Cytomel,' she says he told her. Cytomel is the brand name for a form of synthetic thyroid hormone, prescribed when the thyroid is naturally underactive, which can lead to weight gain and fatigue. When Goucher asked how she would get it, she says Salazar told her, 'Just ask Galen for some of his, he has a prescription for it.'"
Salazar isn't a doctor. He shouldn't be prescribing medication for his athletes. At least have some quack doctor tell Goucher she needs it. Also, I'm weary of recommending weight loss to someone with a history of eating disorders, regardless of how far in the past they were (video...go to around 1:30 for the Dorito story).

The rest of the Cytomel story in the article does not reflect well on Salazar.

"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.
Goucher says Salazar later told her how they would convince the doctor Rupp desperately needed an IV: 'We have it down. I've coached [Rupp] on what to say. The doctors will ask him, 'When was the last time you went to the bathroom?' and he'll say, 'I don't remember.' They'll say, 'When was the last time you were able to drink?' and he'll say 'I can't'.'  Neither Salazar nor Rupp responded to questions about the IV in Daegu."
As noted earlier in the story, Lance Armstrong and others used saline IV drips to mask drug use. There are no noted performance enhancing benefits (read: no reason to use the drip unless you're hiding something). Not to mention that lying to obtain the TUE is cheating.

"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.'"
Goucher is exactly right. That's not the way it works. When you start to get run down at the end of the year, you usually run one bad race and realize it's time to pack it and start the next training phase. Pharmaceutical enhancement, though, makes this turnaround possible.

The way I see it, the NOP is doing the same thing that Team USPS was doing in cycling in the late 90s and early 2000s. The only difference is the coach (Salazar) is heading the operation instead of an athlete (Armstrong). The parallels are uncanny.

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.