I just have a really good feeling about Addy's character, from everything I've seen and heard of her. I know many consider it a serious error that she's still close with Lauren Johnson, but for the sake of argument, suppose that Addy genuinely doesn't believe the allegations (at least ones implicating Lauren specifically). Might it not be GOOD, then, that she refuses to cut a close mentor and friend out of her life based on them? And at significant cost to herself -- as others here have commented, if it weren't for these widespread suspicions, she'd undoubtedly be bombarded with sponsorship offers and other opportunities. So whereas people are accusing Addy of participating in a doping regime in order to further her own advancement, it's verifiably true that she's *sacrificing* her own advancement in the sport in a big way, by refusing to cut these ties.
So there's a scenario here in which, far from being a villain, she's positively saintly.
Good. As long as she takes her act somewhere else and stops infecting college running with this trash. I cannot stand dopers and I am damn good at ferreting them out. It's not rocket science.
If you can't stand dopers, why do you only relentlessly post on Wiley threads?
I don't really care about whether she is or isn't doing (I assume most people setting records are doping at this point because if the previous record was obtained by a known doper--say Shelby Houlihan--then breaking it probably requires doping).
But I did want to say that the Indianapolis Star has not retracted the story, and the implication that the story is false because a reporter with 30 years experience may no longer be employed there is absolutely ridiculous. It's not as if journalism hasn't seen a massive amount of layoffs in the past few years. The Star's parent company, Gannett has reduced its staffing by over 50% since 2019:
Wiley defending herself on Twitter. Passed 8 drug tests apparently.
She should have gone with Mo Katir's response -- "ask your husband if Wiley is beautiful or not". Genuinely though, that strategy earned Katir some credibility from JG and the brojos on the pod.
Holy cow! She beat world championship qualifier Kaela Edwards too. Maybe she should focus on the 800m for 2024?
T&F needs a villain. I can't explain it, but I firmly believe she's dirty, but there's something perversely satisfying about watching her continued successes. I want her to smash every American record and push for world placings/Golds.
Let's be real, doping was going on at the high school and college levels in the 1990s, when I was a competitive runner. Some of the stuff that was widespread back then (Creatine and Andro for two) had not yet been banned, and weren't banned until 2000.
By Brent Edmunds brent@newsroom.byu.edu The NCAA recently passed down a ban on all muscle-building supplements for college athletes, and leveled the field of play for the future. “An institution may provide only nonmuscle-bui...
The reality is if you know there's not going to be tests, and a college scholarship is at the end of buying a $30 vial of EPO or going to GNC and loading up on Andro, lots of people will do just that. And of course when one average runner doper takes a scholarship away from borderline scholarship runners, the borderline scholarship runner dopes and becomes an all american recruit. I'm not suggesting everyone dopes but I am suggesting doping begets doping.
If you want to watch a totally pure race, go watch a local 5k that gives a medal for winning or a pair of socks for placing in the top 50. Nobody is going to dope for a pair of socks. Though the Masters race probably isn't clean, but that's half about legitimate medical needs for things like beta blockers and half about people not wanting to accept they're aging and trying to hang on to old times.
But when there's hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, people will act unethically in order to obtain it. And that isn't just limited to running. It's things like Theranos in the business world and corruption in the government world too. What motivates doping isn't exclusive to running. And if you really want to eliminate doping in the running world, you have to figure out a way to take the money away from dopers if they're caught. But that would essentially be impossible to prove by even a preponderance of evidence standard because the doper would say, "I didn't use before whatever date."
Even the most notorious doper of all time, Lance Armstrong, who defrauded the United States Government (the Postal Service was his sponsor) out of $32.3 million ended up settling the fraud case for $6.65 million:
And the only reason that case could be brought is because his sponsor was the government and they can sue for making a misrepresentation in the procurement of a contract even a decade later.
And the sponsors that paid Armstrong the most (Nike and Discovery Channel) did not sue him. That's because the sponsorship model that drives individual sport is based off of generating sales and advertising/earned media. If, say, Nike paid Armstrong $15 million, there was $150 million in earned media and $300 million in added sales due to the sponsorship, they wouldn't have any damages to claim, even if there's negative doping stories that mention the sponsorship because those stories are probably going to mention Nike in like the eighth paragraph and the value of that is less than what they got from earned media. So they don't even have any damages.
And if you're a shoe company that just wants earned media and high profile commercials to drive sales, why should you even care about doping? So your athlete gets caught and banned. You'll just sign another athlete, etc.
Limiting the number of sponsorships is the only true way to get doping out of professional running. If each shoe company were allowed say 15 runners and if one gets caught doping, the sponsorship number declines to 10, etc, then there'd be massive pressure not to dope. But that's also a restraint of trade and will never happen. Just accept the system encourages doping.
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Reason provided:
Grammar
That always explained the perverse Houlihan fan club on here to be honest. Heck even with Armstrong it was actually funny watch him out dope the European riders who tried to be just as dirty, especially after what happened to Lemond. But to do it in college against college competition is a complete scumbag move.
I just have a really good feeling about Addy's character, from everything I've seen and heard of her. I know many consider it a serious error that she's still close with Lauren Johnson, but for the sake of argument, suppose that Addy genuinely doesn't believe the allegations (at least ones implicating Lauren specifically). Might it not be GOOD, then, that she refuses to cut a close mentor and friend out of her life based on them? And at significant cost to herself -- as others here have commented, if it weren't for these widespread suspicions, she'd undoubtedly be bombarded with sponsorship offers and other opportunities. So whereas people are accusing Addy of participating in a doping regime in order to further her own advancement, it's verifiably true that she's *sacrificing* her own advancement in the sport in a big way, by refusing to cut these ties.
So there's a scenario here in which, far from being a villain, she's positively saintly.
I don't want to go too far into this but Addy is too involved with Nick and Lauren to be truly oblivious to whether or not the allegations are true. It's just not possible for her not to know. She could be in denial, but it's not possible for her not to know for sure.
As I said before, Sage H-K isn’t on Addy Wiley’s level. I understand she’s technically faster now but she’s had many more years of training. I don’t think AW even did cross country in high school. I think she played soccer? Sage won’t be able to compete with Wiley 12 months from now. Wonder if pros will start following her on Instagram when she starts smoking them on the DL. Meanwhile most of them are probably doing stuff even shadier (AW is actually clean)…
As I said before, Sage H-K isn’t on Addy Wiley’s level. I understand she’s technically faster now but she’s had many more years of training. I don’t think AW even did cross country in high school. I think she played soccer? Sage won’t be able to compete with Wiley 12 months from now. Wonder if pros will start following her on Instagram when she starts smoking them on the DL. Meanwhile most of them are probably doing stuff even shadier (AW is actually clean)…
I hope they congratulate Wiley when she breaks multiple American records in a couple years
Like they did for Houlihan? If anything I would say team Wiley is making the same mistake Shelby did. When it became evident that, like Wiley, Shelby was doping and doing it blatantly, Shelby kept doubling down, rubbed it in everyone's face, never knew when to lower her profile, kept claiming she was clean, thought she could never get caught. And they finally got her. Wiley seems to have just decided she does not care if people think she is doping or not. She will pay lip service to saying she is clean, then just makes the fraud even more overt. She is a flaming car wreck careening down the mountain.
Btw. WTH with all the deleted posts? This board has bent over backwards to prevent discussion of a bona fide scandal. It is essentially a pro doping site given the uneven moderation. If you say, for example that Lauren Johnson, Wiley's mentor, very likely doped to make a WT, which she clearly did (mules to race horses and all), it gets deleted. I guess it is because she was a "multiport athlete." Lolll.
If you bring up the relevant details of the HU scandal (athletes accusing the Johnsons of doping them; the Johnsons admitting having prescriptions to epo and steroids; Nick admitting giving injections to athletes, etc) it gets deleted.
All that seems highly relevant. Wiley is the most obvious dope cheat on the US scene since Houlihan. They are not even trying to hide it. Yet in the same way Houlihan was protected here (because she was "undertrained" and a college grad and seemed darn nice), this board makes honest discussion of this subject needlessly difficult even in a restricted thread.
But I am undeterred. :)
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I think the saddest part about the continued ties to the Johnsons is that a very talented athlete will miss out on countless sponsorship opportunities in a sport where $ is hard to come by. ESPECIALLY, if there is a glaring public perception issue. Doping or not, true/false allegations or not, publicly standing by the accused (tv interviews) is never good. Wait to hear a verdict maybe? This is someone’s career.