Cal alumnus Torrence sets pace on running clean race
While training with a group of African middle-distance runners two years ago in Spain, David Torrence knew something wasn’t right.
The coach kept pushing “vitamin injections” to help the Cal alumnus keep up with his stable of world-record holders.
“When I was there I wanted to believe,” said Torrence, who became an informant for track and field investigators suspicious of the coach. “I wanted this to be legit.”
Torrence got a better understanding of the operation last month when Spanish authorities arrested his former coach Jama Aden at a hotel near Barcelona where some of the biggest names in the sport trained. According to media reports, police uncovered 60 syringes and vials of the banned blood-boost-
“He’snotgoing to takeapill to makehim run faster. He doesn’t trust anything.” — Bianca Torrence, mother of runner David Torrence
ing drug erythropoietin, known as EPO, at the hotel. They also confiscated bottles and vials of other injectable drugs.
Coupled with revelations about systematic drug use by Russian athletes, the latest case highlights the credibility problem of the 2016 Summer Olympics that open Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro. Torrence and other runners headed to Brazil wonder how much has changed in a sport riddled with drug scandals that include the BALCO episode from more than a decade ago.
“Everybody knows what goes on,” Torrence’s coach John Cook said. “There aren’t any miracles. The last guy who walked on water wasn’t a track athlete.”
Russia’s drug scandal
Aden’s case has not received much attention in the face of the extraordinary allegations involving Russia. The International Olympic Committee on Sunday stopped short of issuing a blanket ban on the Russian delegation despite an independent report verifying details about a state-sponsored system that had positive drug-test samples regularly switched or destroyed.
Most Russian track athletes, though, are not expected to compete in Brazil after international sport’s highest judicial body last week upheld a ban by the governing body IAAF.
“It was a long time coming,” Torrence said of allegations against the Russians. “There are a lot of athletes over the years that my friends and I feel have gotten away with it.”
The Russian case, however, doesn’t provide incentives for athletes to police themselves as Torrence has tried to do.
Yuliya Stepanova, the 800-meter runner who ignited the Russian investigation by speaking publicly two years ago, was banned from the Rio Games on Sunday. The International Olympic Committee ruled she did not “satisfy the ethical requirements for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games” because of her own admitted use of banned drugs.
Torrence’s role in the Aden case also underscores how whistleblower athletes can find themselves in awkward situations. He ex- pects to see some of Aden’s runners at the Rio Games where he will compete for Peru in the 5,000 meters.
His mother Bianca Torrence worries about retaliation, but the Southern Californian said he won’t walk around in fear.
“All I’ve done is told the truth,” Torrence said. “Athletes at the camp or part of that group would have to agree they got ‘vitamin in- jections.’ They can’t argue that.”
Cook, 75, also worries because he experienced death threats and intimidating calls and text messages just for suggesting that Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria looked too good in winning the 1,500 meters at the 2012 London Games. Aden coached the gold-medal winner at the time.
“I brought Jama back into the sport,” Cook said of giving the Somali his start at George Mason University. “He was one of my favorite guys. I just don’t know what happened.”
IAAF officials have declined to discuss the case other than acknowledging they began investigating Aden in 2013 with the help of Interpol and other agencies.
Torrence, 30, was recruited to help investigators after he left Aden’s training group early last year. But he wasn’t there long enough to become a trusted confidant and had no firsthand knowl- edge of the Africans’ alleged drug-taking system or how they might have avoided detection.
Aden, 53, is a former Somali middle-distance runner who competed at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. He could not be reached for comment.
Keeping clean
In 2014, Torrence became one of the few Americans to join an elite African group after coaching himself for eight months when Cook retired. His relationship with Cook gave the runner an entree into a group that included Ethiopian Genzebe Dibaba, the women’s 1,500 meters world-record holder.
“I’ve always been one to not follow the mold,” said Torrence, who in 2007 broke Cal’s 50-year-old record in the mile. “I could join groups in the United States and know their training and how they do it. I had no idea about Jama’s group.”
Torrence, the American record holder for the indoors 1,000 meters, started off feeling hopeful about his new coach. But suspicions surfaced after he struggled to stay with training partners when attending a speed camp in Spain before the 2014 U.S. championships. Torrence had never trained at such high speeds.
Aden offered the runner vitamin injections to help recover from the trying workouts. Torrence told the coach that he wasn’t comfortable taking a concoction unfamiliar to him. The runner offered to get vitamin supplements on his own if told which kind. Aden again asked Torrence to consider the injections.
“He’s not going to take a pill to make him run faster,” Bianca Torrence said of her son. “He doesn’t trust anything.”
Cook, who is back coaching the runner, discovered Torrence’s diligence when handing him two pills of Aleve for a minor injury many years ago. The runner declined to swallow them because they didn’t have any markings.
Torrence said he “didn’t want to be someone who blindly took something someone gave me.”
He rejected Aden’s overtures again in the summer of ’14 although the injections seemingly rejuvenated some of his training partners.
Torrence has not let the experience dent his confidence heading into his first Olympics. The runner knows the idealistic notion of a level playing field doesn’t exist. But he’s hopeful “the cheaters have messed up their cycles.”
It’s all he can cling to in order to keep running.