In search of the truth in a burgeoning scandal

Let me say this, up front, right now: I do not have a strong opinion either way on the allegations of wrongdoing (doping) with the Nike Oregon Project, which was first brought to my attention in this short New York Times article. The news of this came as a bit of a surprise to me, but maybe I’m a bit naïve in that regard. When it becomes he said/she said, my head starts spinning. I had the utmost respect for Alberto Salazar when he was an elite-level athlete – one of the highest compliments I ever received was from a thrower on my high school team in 1982 when he called me “Salazar” because I was always running around our school's grass fields – and I have the utmost respect for what he has done with the Oregon Project. I will say this: I sure wish he would bring a little more to the table in the humility department. But, as an old baseball player (Dizzy Dean) once said: “It ain’t braggin’ if you done it.”

Of course! Given the allegations out there now, that quote can be taken a few different ways.

One reason I was never a big Lance Armstrong fan – despite all the philanthropic good he did for cancer research – was his utter lack of humility, his arrogance and his downright meanness at times. He was taken down, and good, by some quality journalism and by a really effective lawyer/drug cop named Travis Tygart. I’m not saying that Alberto Salazar is Lance Armstrong; the comparison is a bit of a stretch, because Armstrong was a drug lord/ringleader at the same time as he was a world-class athlete. Also, I’m not saying the same fate awaits Salazar and his minions, because reading between the lines so far it appears they have been able to stay just north of the fair-play line – the term “no smoking gun” appears quite a bit in what I have read. 

But you cannot ignore the quality of the journalism done here by David Epstein, who has established himself in the field of sports journalism. Read this article. It cannot be ignored, especially the stuff toward the end about the Gouchers, who sound very much like Frankie and Betsy Andreu from the Armstrong case. For the sake of the sport, and for the sake of USA Track and Field, let’s hope this doesn’t escalate into another sport drug scandal. There is a lot of information out there; we would do well to read and be slow to judge, but we cannot ignore it and hope it goes away. Let’s see where this goes …