Kara Goucher and Cytomel: Salazar's bait-and-switch
Somehow, Alberto Salazar's open letter (part 1, part 2) is being touted by ostensibly literate people as being not merely credible but a knock-down argument against those who have accused the (Nike) Oregon Project distance coach of playing well outside the rules. This is a perfectly reasonable assessment insofar as it is reasonable to opine confidently about something you clearly have not read closely, or at all.
Kara and Adam Goucher were the first former NOP athletes to speak on camera about their experiences and suspicions. Both have been duly eviscerated on the Letsrun.com message board. I hope that Robert and Weldon Johnson use the latest barrage of suspiciously repetitive, anonymous anti-Goucher, anti-Steve Magness posts as a catalyst to quit operating their forum like an unaccredited mental hospital, and make registration mandatory in order to post. It is painfully obvious that the majority of these posts are originating from a comparatively small number of anonymous sources.
In short, Kara accused Salazar of giving her a bottle of Cytomel, a thyroid medication, in the spring of 2011 as the Boston Marathon approached. Kara says Salazar wanted her to lose the remnants of her post-pregnancy weight -- she had given birth to a son, Colt, in September -- and encouraged her to take the Cytomel without a prescription and despite the fact that she was already taking a thyroid medication for long-standing Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
In Salazar's rebuttal, in the section titled "Kara's Post-Pregnancy Weight," he describes being perfectly content with Kara's spring 2011 weight.
The first problem with the Cytomel-weight matter lies in the timeline of events. From the most recent ProPublica article by David Epstein:
Salazar said that he never criticized Goucher's weight and that Brown, Goucher's endocrinologist, is the one who directed him to give Cytomel to Goucher at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, in August 2011. The ProPublica and BBC accounts referred to an instance earlier in 2011, in March, prior to the Boston Marathon. His story is a different timeline, Goucher told ProPublica. Hes trying to use Daegu to cover up Boston.
Kara's claim that Salazar attempted cloud the events of the spring of 2011 is more than credible. Salazar, under the heading "Kara and Cytomel," released this letter he solicited from his pet endocrinologist, Jeffrey Brown, a confirmed maverick of long standing when it comes to thyroid drugs, dated June 11, 2015 and referring to an e-mail on August 20, 2011. Salazar also released a number of e-mails from August 2011 that together appear to confirm that at that time, Kara had a prescription for Cytomel.
But, as outlined above by Mr. Epstein, Kara states that Salazar's first attempt to get her to take Cytomel actually took place five months earlier, during her Boston training, when she did not have a prescription. And in spite of what was obviously part of Salazar's far-flung strategy of releasing only what he wanted people to see of various e-mail conversations, this is eminently believable.
In his open letter, Salazar says that he was happy with Kara's weight during her winter and spring 2011 Boston build-up. Yet it's plain even from the one e-mail Salazar released from the spring of that year, dated March 11, that Salazar was still concerned that Kara was too heavy, even if he was softening the blow in his conversations with her nutritionist by attributing what he saw as excess to muscle development in her upper body, calves and thighs. There's no telling what he may have said to her in person.
Salazar then refers to e-mails from March 25, April 4 and April 11 in which he claims to have been positively ecstatic over whatever weight Kara had by then reached. Strangely, however, he has chosen not to make these e-mails public.
Doesn't that strike you as suspicious?
Salazar concludes this section with, "These documents make clear that I was thrilled with Karas weight after she had Colt and I told her so repeatedly." Here, by "these documents," he means a single document -- the March 11 e-mail exchange.
It's a classic bait-and-switch: Salazar provides one e-mail that doesn't even establish what he hopes to establish, then refers to -- but does not disclose -- e-mails in which he supposedly really approves of her weight, and ends with "Look at all of these documents!" This is the second big problem with Salazar's rebuttal to the Gouchers.
None of this reveals what people have started clamoring loudly for: evidence of outright doping. But it established without question that anyone who believes that Salazar's letter was a forceful rebuttal is apparently a fan of clear deceit, lame smokescreens, and bullshit in general.
I really don't know why more people can't see through such an obvious, even clumsy attempt at a smokescreen. I think the FDA should advise putting Ritalin in every municipal water supply in America.
Below is Kara's pertinent and forceful interview on Flotrack after her running the 5,000 meters at the U.S. Track and Field Championships this morning.
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