A short list of exceptionally stupid beliefs about the NOP mess

Here I refer chiefly to things being used throughout the dumbosphere in attempts to discredit Salazar's various accusers.

"Why didn't (the Gouchers/Steve Magness/others) come forward with this stuff years ago, when they first knew about it? That they waited is a huge dent in their credibility." (alternate version: "If (the Gouchers/Magness/etc.) know more than they are saying, then either they need to say it now or STFU!")

These observations bespeak a profound ignorance of human nature and how USADA conducts investigations, and only the latter is remotely excusable.

First of all, if you are a paid professional athlete and part of a training group you come to know or believe is dirty, the likelihood that you will immediately call foul to members of the press is vanishingly small. Few runners would want to piss away their livelihood and risk the wrath of a notoriously despotic and narcissistic coach-figure without the assurance of winning an ensuing battle guaranteed to be ugly for all involved.

Second, once an athlete approaches USADA and an investigation gets underway, that athlete in some cases may sign documents affirming that he or she won't talk to the press or anyone else about certain matters. I'm no expert on this side of things myself, but I know this much.

"Salazar gives evidence for what he says in his letter, read the e-mails."

In a number of recent posts to this blog, notably this one and this one, I have described inconsistencies, misleading statements and other clear forms of chicanery in Salazar's letter. In more than one instance, Salazar's e-mails actually contradict the thesis he uses the e-mails to "support," as in the case of his claim that he wasn't encouraging Kara Goucher to lose weight during her 2011 Boston Marathon training build-up.

The only real reason I've seen anyone give for believing what Salazar says is true is that he sounds credible, that his explanations seem to fall in line with his personality. I shouldn't have to point out that this is materially no different from referring to the Christian Bible to "prove" the existence of the Christian deity.

"Salazar freely admits he operates in a 'gray area.' There's no evidence he's actually broken any rules."

Some people seem convinced that admitting to pushing the limits of what's legal is suggestive of being completely unwilling to bust right through the so-called "gray zone" into pitch black. Call me illogical, but if you show me someone ever eager to do whatever is allowed within the rules and flirt with sanctions in the process, I'm looking at someone who's more likely, not less, to genuinely cheat if he thinks he can get away with it.

But I can't prove this, so on to things that do matter. Kara Goucher produced a hand-labeled Cytomel bottle with handwriting on it Salazar admits is his, and a chart that shows Rupp on prednisone and "testosterone medication" when Rupp was 16 years old that Salazar also admits is real. He would most likely deny that he had anything to do with either of these things if he could, but he can't, so he's concocted stories around these that don't match those of his accusers. There are the accounts of Salazar hiding drugs in hollowed-out books and magazines that Salazar admits are true, saying he "only" wanted to get around declaring these items at Customs checkpoints (these were prescription drugs, so it's apparently okay). There's Salazar having Androgel in the Park City, Utah condominium that Alberto admits having a prescription for because of his heart -- or his hypogonadism, depending on whom he's talking to and when -- and sometimes giving Rupp massages himself behind closed doors rather than having a trained, on-hand masseur do the job. There's the fact that he bizarrely denied coaching Mary Slaney at the time she peed hot despite writing in his own autobiography that he was. There are various allegations of wrongdoing by perhaps two dozen people, some of whose identities and statements are not yet public information.

Taking all of this together, it starts to sound absurdly weak to protest, "Well, show me the doping!"

"Salazar was up front about testing the testosterone cream on his sons. He even told USATF about the experiments, and never hid his Androgel. Would a guilty man flaunt these things?"

This follows neatly from my previous example, and the answer is a resounding yes. Of course he would.

If you were planning to use "I was sabotaged!" as an excuse for a positive drug test, wouldn't you want the people doing the testing to know that you were supposedly taking steps to safeguard against such a thing, so that if your athlete did piss hot, you could refer back to your "experiment" and say, "This is exactly what I was talking about"?

Those who see Salazar's being forthcoming about these "experiments" as pointing toward him being on the level about them are either extremely credulous or not considering the matter at any length. A person operating an ongoing doping program is not going to neglect covering his ass in any way possible at every step. And even if you don't think Salazar is doing any outright cheating these days, he has made careers as both an athlete and a coach of pushing the limits, thinking of the next possible unexploited means of gaining an edge, and in general being unabashedly Machiavellian.

I am not saying that Salazar is clearly guilty on account of any of these things, only that it's laughable to see them as bolstering his claims of playing fair.

"No one has seen any instances of actual doping."

This one contains two-pronged stupidity. One tine is the assumption that everyone in the NOP who has ever seen anything nefarious within the organization has already gone public with everything he or she saw. The other is the idea that a paranoiac like Salazar would just do anything and everything in front of all members of the group.

"If (Kara, Adam, others) were part of a program they claim is dirty, they were probably doping or on TUEs themselves!"

If any of the people alleging misconduct around pharmaceuticals on Salazar's part actually used banned substances themselves, it would be unfortunate (although hardly shocking) but would not let Salazar off the hook. On the contrary, if someone comes forward and says, "I was in the NOP and Alberto gave me [banned drug X]," this would constitute precisely the "smoking gun" so many of Salazar's active and nominal defenders are clamoring for.

"Kara's a whiny biatch, Adam is a douchebag and Magness is a shitweasel! Fuck those guys!"

I think I can skip elaborating on why these are not convincing arguments.