well, wait a minute. i'm in a conversation with his attorney right now. howard jacobs is the go-to attorney for both safesport and USADA type stuff and he knows his business, i'll wait to see what he said, but i can see a couple of sides here.

on the one hand, if the beta-2-agonist he got popped for is coming off the banned list at the end of this year, then it's clearly not performance enhancing. his ban ought to end now. it's kind of like getting sent to jail for pot, and then pot gets legalized. now you're sitting in jail for a crime that isn't any longer a crime, and if it's not a crime now it probably didn't warrant being considered a crime then. so, is starky a doper? no. not close.

that said, it's athlete 101, man. take another beta-2-agonist. take salbutamol. you don't have to take fluticasone. there are other combos of beta-2-agonist and corticosteroid. i would hazard a guess that the reason he got denied the TUE is because of that very thing. obviously he wasn't deathly ill, because he turned around and competed in florida after withdrawing from kona.

finally, your post suggests that TUEs should be automatic if applied for. what about EPO? or a nice gorilla's dose of testosterone? that okay?

so, is starky a doper? not even. not close. did starky need to take fluticasone? was that really necessary? i was married to a woman who, at her peak, got 2nd in kona in the pro woman's field. she had asthma bad. she carried a beta-2-agonist, as rescue medication, the inhaler strapped to her wrist for the whole race, swim, bike and run. we knew what was on the banned list. fluticasone came out during her career. she would have loved some of the new options. but, well, they were banned. if you have asthma, i just don't see the excuse for not using approved medications until you get the TUE. if there's something i'm missing, i would love to hear it. so far, i only know what i've read.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

but then ... sounds like he lives by the sword and dies by it. we're fond of saying here that it's the athlete's job to know the rules and follow them. . .

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

You may know what you’ve read, but you certainly made some assumptions, that’s for sure.

No, I did not suggest everyone who applies for a TUE get one. Not sure where you are getting that from.

What it does look like is he did his due diligence, worked closely with his doctor (who apparently didn’t suggest salbutamol), he fit the description of needing urgent care for the sake of the health of the athlete (not as an emergency inhaler, but as a result of an active acute infection), filed all the appropriate paperwork, and they dragged their feet and finally said ‘well, you should have done this, even though your doctor gave you that and you did everything right, we are still going to pop you for four years.’

This is not a case of him needing EPO/T/etc for a chronic condition, this was an acute illness. Ironman/USADA initially handed down a four year ban for something that is now no longer banned, for something that is ‘clearly not performance enhancing.’ There are thousands of people who still have pot charges on their record despite it being legalized. I would imagine that Starky will have to spend thousands of more dollars to be eligible to race next year.

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http://www.savagesentiments.blogspot.com/
http://www.tricoachmartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teameverymanjack

maybe. that's my takeaway at face value. but i have got not one thing from anyone on this, not starky, not his attorney, not USADA nor from IM (except for a press release from his atty). so, let's see what we get back. but i see this as a little like the strongest cyclist in the field getting a drafting penalty. on its face that sounds like a bad pop, but, sometimes you fall afoul of the rules through inattention. but i have no more to go on than you do at this point. i would not have posted, but i felt like the original post in this thread deserved to have some context.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'll just add a different perspective- if you're struggling to suck air in when doing feck all, you go see the doc, he prescribes, you question it once, and he/she says 'man you NEED this' (as you're going downhill) you're still gasping... your doc says it IS NEEDED as a matter of urgency... you're still gasping... you take it before you suffocate, knowing you having filled all the forms in.

Said as an asthmatic who has been in hospital for a week in the past and unable to even get any words out before I went in - the deterioration was pretty fast (from thinking I just needed a couple of puffs of an inhaler to being on a nebuliser + oxygen + stack of steroids and couldnt speak in a handful of hours. And that was without a chest infection.

family doctors don't know what's on the banned list. they don't care. that's not their job. it is absolutely not an excuse to say, "i took it under a doctor's care."

what you wrote is that "the system is stupid," that the ban is "silly," and that it's a "broken system." i'm pretty sure there's a nice long legal opinion from CAS explaining why they felt that what seems to you an easy case to adjudicate came down against, and not for, the athlete. have you read it?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Wow, lots of stupidity here. Competing when you've been warned that you don't have a valid TUE is unbelievably stupid. On the other hand, a four year ban for something that goes off the banned list in a month is even more stupid, and it's hard to imagine it not getting reduced as a result.

I don't see how being given a 4 year penalty, having to spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight that penalty, and then having it reduced to 13 months is a 5 minute drafting penalty. Even if he gets the penalty removed at the end of the year, then sure, it is a $75,000 drafting penalty.

He also didn't fall afoul of the rules for "inattention". He followed doctors orders, applied for and followed up on his TUE.

Fortunately for him, the penalty is retroactive to Dec, 2019, so he will be able to race in 2021, if we are so lucky to be able to do.

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http://www.savagesentiments.blogspot.com/
http://www.tricoachmartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teameverymanjack

as noted, i have some experience with this. so i hear what you're saying. but what i have gotten, so far, unless i'm misreading it, is that andrew was taking this particular beta-2-agonist right up to the point of the race. he got 3rd place there. so, he wasn't suffocating, he was racing an ironman in under 8hr.

that said, i have asked IM why they pressed for such a harsh sentence for taking drug that is about to come off the banned list (if that is in fact true).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The system is broken if an athlete, who is now patient, has to go to a committee of MD's and from three different governing bodies, who don't agree with each other, to get treatment of an ACUTE infection and not lose his job. That is insane!!!!

When he self-ID Ironman should have said up front "you can't race" until this is resolved.

i used an analogy. all analogies break down. drafting isn't doping. my point is that you can be an advocate for anti-doping or anti-drafting and still get popped.

as for the rules, yes, he followed the rules. but he also knew that the TUE might be denied. which it was. and he got a ban. that's all part of the rules. now, if what you're saying is that there ought to be a way for athletes to not have to pay a legal bill of that size, yeah. fine. he's a member of the PTO and perhaps the PTO can address this.

but look, one of the things that bugs me about these discussions (and i'm guilty of this!) is that we don't apply our sense of empathy or outrage evenly. did you argue this way for kevin moats? because, kevin was easy to villainize. starky has been easy to lionize. they both spent a lot of money in legal fees. what is the remedy that should apply to both?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Based on the other positives for the same substance, the four year ban seemed really harsh. Do they know something we don't or just plan stupidity?

As a kind of interesting aside, Starky’s wife is a pharmacist.

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Matt

So, he is out of the Daytona race?

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

The system is certainly inconsistent.

How can wada square this with the fact that Henri Shoeman keeps his prednisone-powered 2016 bronze?

I’m not understanding why the rules shouldn’t apply to “one of the loudest voices against doping” too? I would think, if he wants to remain “the loudest voice”, Starky would agree, right? Or does the loudest voice rule only apply to others? Maybe the system is harsh or wrong, but he should still be subject to it, right?

he applied for a TUE and while waiting for its approval, decided to race anyway. then when it was denied, he is now complaining that Ironman popped him? seems like that's why the whole system is there

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

I like Starky, but I think this is exactly correct. Why race when the TUE is still up in the air? He must have known this was possible if something went wrong with the TUE.

Not sure how this will affect things, but breo was prescribed off label.

It's for maintenance for people with chronic lung disease like COPD and asthma. Starky said in the post that he doesn't have asthma.

I did not see it posted here anywhere else. The USADA release on the matter contains links to a number of relevant decisions, including the CAS decision on the TUE and also the MGSS (Ironman's arbitration body) on the ADRV. https://www.usada.org/...nied-cas-arbitrator/

Many of the questions posed in this thread are answered by reading through the documents linked there.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

See page 16 of the MGSS decision: https://cdn1.sportngin.com/...394874264.1606339705

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

1. In your first post you talked about him being a fervent anti-doper. Is that somehow supposed to be a shield from the consequences of the rules as applied to him? I'm basically asking how is his supposed public position on doping somehow supposed to excuse him. If anything it makes him more guilty (or at least more guilty of knowing what he was doing was wrong).

2. If you are a fervent anti-doper, you more than anyone should understand the rules and why they need to be followed and all the perils that come from not following them and then making up excuses for why you shouldn't be punished. As someone else said, "live by the sword, die by the sword"

3. You are talking about some acute condition and he needed this medication. did he get popped for out of competition or post-race? If he truly did have some serious acute health condition that mandated this treatment (for health reasons), why was he racing? One option, if he truly needed this medication (at risk of life), was take it and not race until he got this sorted out. Apparently his condition was not really that serious and/or he decided to have his cake and it eat it too. His choice, but sounds like now he is dealing with the consequences.

spending lots of money on lawyers and fighting legal decisions against you is not a "have to". As unbelievable as it sounds, our court and arbitration systems are actually right more often than they are wrong. Or to the extent you don't believe what I am saying, I can probably guess who you voted for.

Even worse, they specifically told him that if he competed he would be committing a violation, and then he competed anyway! (See point 23 in Rappstar's link.) I grant that it doesn't seem like he was attempting to gain an unfair advantage, but the system has to punish behavior like that or it will break down. I probably would have given him something like three months, not 13, but still.