Uli Fluhme has been fairly outspoken on another media source. I would love to hear from him on ST. Maybe it's not worth it for him to wade in to the fray?

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Jason
None of the secrets of success will work unless you do.

Its not exactly the most popular brand of salt tabs out there, most people here have never heard of it. So then out of the very few triathletes that are for some reason using it instead of salt tabs, base salts, etc., how many of them are being tested? There ya go.

I wonder what would make these two female athletes choose this particular salt product over the really well known mainstream products?

I wonder why the athletes in question don't say something like "I took Neurolytes, manufactured by Classified Nutrition which subsequently came back testing positive for Ostarine. I would urge all athletes to avoid this product at all costs. "

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_______________________________________________
you know my name, look up my number
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I would guess either they are sponsored by them or fear of lawsuit?

"I wonder what would make these two female athletes choose this particular salt product over the really well known mainstream products?"

according to my reporting these athletes took DIFFERENT brands of salt tabs.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I hear ya. I assume lawsuits. Frivilous or otherwise cost money. Rebekah Keat outed Hammer when she was popped. Havent touched Hammer since but for on course drink which is really no choice Challenge PEN 2013.

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@rhyspencer

As Dan said the athletes took different pills but you bring up a really good point. Why this particular product is a great question. I mean when they say "classified nutrition" I guess they really meant business. As I said in a thread a few weeks back, I ditched a whey protein company because the company was sending it IMO in fraudulent manner. Using USPS, which goes by weight and dimensions, using a prepaid label with the wrong weight measurement. When they did it a second time, I was done. If I can't trust a companies business practices how can I trust them to deliver a product that has what they say it has in it.

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Based on your Promo code for BASE Performance, can you share why you would trust/use their products?

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I'm not sure about you guys, but I stick to a very simple rule when it comes to what supplements I do or do not take:

Stay away from anything that has lightning bolts on the bottle. (Seriously)

I suppose anything branding itself as "classified" could fall into the same bucket. If it's advertising itself as secret or as giving an edge over other supplements, then the first thing to ask is how

I am sure Matt Miller would be happy to chime in. Frankly I would have never thought salt would be a contaminated product. I am still very surprised. Now that I guess it is possible I do like that a whole bunch of pros use the product. While I use the product there are also so many pros who don't disclose they use it. While I haven't benen drug tested since 2013 I know lots of the others are getting tested.

On that note I don't even think I declared Salt as a supplement on my drug testing declaration sheet in 2013. I was on Salt Stick then.

While I don't have hard numbers I might venture to guess that Base is nearing to be the major player in salt in Ironman racing and I of course would like to see NSF certification. In fact it has me rethinking my position entirely that cGMP is not good enough that it also must be NSF. The only NSF product I take for sure is Powerbar BetaAlanine. But I will look to others in the future. These cases should be a wake-up for all pros.

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the salt tablets the two used were not even the same brand

Wasn't it Ostarine that the Australian pro Lisa Marangon also recently tested positive for ? I've heard no mention of salt tablets in her case

Yes she rekons someone contaminated her water bottle while it was unattended in transition.

Yes. And another pro from Utah, Ashley Paulson, was also suspended last year for I believe this same drug.
And she seems about as home-spun as they get. I don't buy it that these athletes are cheating. It is very sad when the system goes overboard and hurts honest people.
Here is an article about supplement companies adding this drug: https://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/...mining-drug-ost.aspx

If they weren't intentionally doping they were obviously still taking big risks.
Have you seen the salt tabs that were found to be tainted, dodgy shit. There are 'safer' brands to take or 'risky' brands to take. The safe brands may be known to have no performance enhancing effect, and cost little, the risky brands claim otherwise and cost a lot...choices were made. Maybe not by all the women but definitely by at least one, and probably others.

Yes she rekons someone contaminated her water bottle while it was unattended in transition.


Just on this point, and having seen what goes on at big Ironman races - It's really hard to control 100% what an athlete will pick up on course.

In other elite level - Word Cup and Olympic Games type of competitions, because of the higher controlled nature of the field of competition, it's easier to do this.

Ironman I am sure does the best as they can, but because of the sheer size and sprawling nature of the race courses, and the fact that you have age-group/recreational athletes out on the same course as you have elite/pros, it's much more difficult to exert 100% control.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

This has me thinking about the global manufacturing and outsourcing business.

What are the odds that both salt tablet brands are made out of the same factory?

If these athletes are indeed ingesting contaminated supplements, they need to be very vocal and identify the manufacturers.

According to the article, this is a regulated substance and it is against the law to add it to any supplement. Even if the company did not intentionally add ostarine to the salt tabs, they are outsourcing to another facility who is illegally using ostarine. They need to be outed because any of their products could be contaminated. Simply having a list someplace on the internet isn't good enough. Before this thread, I didn't even know about this list of potentially contaminated supplements and suspect manufacturers.

When I hear an athlete cry about a positive test due to contaminated supplements and then the athlete doesn't name the manufacturer, I have a hard time believing the athlete. If the supplements really are contaminated, get the name of the manufacturer out there! The only way we can change these practices is with bad publicity so people avoid anything produced by these companies.

Yes.

And really the story should be telling us the name of the substance, at least in the case where the story of cross contamination was believed. Then it is up to the salt tab maker to prove their innocence, there by throwing the athlete under the bus, or come clean and prove that they are doing better going forward.

Someone screwed up in this story. Either the company in question made a bad product, through horrid quality control, or made a PED for athletes on purpose, or the athlete found a way to spike their salt tabs with the PED of choice. None of these scenarios are good.

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Ian

If I take a giant step back and look at this as objectively as possible, I have a hard time believing the athelete justifications and reasons for testing positive.

Of all the chemical compounds in the entire world, the supplement you were taking just happened to have a specifically isentified and banned chemical that can potentially enhance your performance.

In top of that, athelete have been universally warned about taking "supplements".

If your BS detector doesn't at least flash suspicious it's broken.

I'm not saying this is enough to draw final conclusions, but it's foolish to ignore the Occam's Razor "logic".

Ok, apparently the unopened product tested positive. I get that. But again, of all of the salt sticks one could choose, this person just happened chose the one "tainted" with a performance enhancing drug at levels that can the detected from a blood test.

Highly suspect

Right but that is thing, this is salt for crying out loud. It is not like it is something I just made up:

"Jacked"
- Increase FTP by 60 watts
- Increase Recovery Ability
- Have better sex etc

Athletes are going to need salt and other basic ingredients unless Ironman loosens up their policy on littering and we bring back bananas

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There are probably a myriad of factors that I am not thinking about but,

- Libel could be a very serious thing
- The athlete can't really control the message. Even in Beth's case where her blog is linked to, the articles themselves still control the eyeballs. It is what THEY write that matters and the athletes don't control that.

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That's my point. How is salt, something so basic, "tainted" with, OF ALL THINGS, a very specific performance enhancing drug. That doesn't just randomly happen. There is some form of intentionality going on somewhere in this chain of events.

1. These companies secretly add performance enhancing chemicals so that they can sell more of their product. Mass market age groupers, the target market, take them, realize benefits (not knowing the benefits actually accrue from the banned substance) and tell their friends to buy said product.

2. Pro athletes do the same as above.

3. Pro athletes do same as above, but actually know the "real" story.

4. Pro athletes are taking the banned substances intentionally and then just blame generic contamination.

Do you retain un-opened bottles of supplements as a precaution for future testing? If I was a pro and using supplements, I would.

Personally, I'm not surprised that salt tablets would be contaminated. Most supplement manufacturing is contracted out to contract research organizations (CRO's) based on lowest cost. Where are these CRO's? Many of them are in places like India, China, etc. What's the quality control like at the CRO? If the last batch of material that went through the tableting machine, was a contaminated batch of "Mr Max's Muscle Super Booster", well, then there's a chance that the next tableting run will be contaminated if the machine wasn't cleaned properly. One way to get around this is to do all manufacturing in-house. You should also have an analytical group with QA/QC to check the quality of the raws entering your site (e.g. is the salt, really 100% salt).

I looked at the websites of a couple supplement companies. None of them disclose any information on manufacturing or what they are doing regarding quality control. Most of them have athlete testimonials, but nothing on how often they test the finished product for composition or contamination. Personally, If I'm going to take a supplement or nutritional item (e.g. gel), I only use items from companies that I think are large enough to manufacture in-house (e.g. gels, it's Clif, Powerbar, Gu only).

I don't think it is a fact that this drug is "performance enhancing" in the case of endurance athletes.
It seem to be more used by body builders in lieu of steroids. The target market is supposedly osteoporosis patients or to slow down muscle wasting in cancer patients.

And as Gerdes stated in her blog the 1/2 life and cycle for this drug would do no good for the race she competed in. She states that she was tested and clean 4 or so weeks before at another tri.