The holes in AJ’s story
By now you've probably read that AJ has decided (following the advice of Jeff Gordon) to tell the truth.
That alone is unsettling. How many weeks has it been since Daytona, and he's only NOW been persuaded to be honest? For the past month, he's been acting like a wrongly-accused, health-conscious, innocent guy who is reportedly "gathering everything in his possession" to have toxicology reports run to find out what could have caused this.
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| Allmendinger mouthpiece Tara Ragan (R) with Michael Shank at the MSR IndyCar team announcement of which Allmendinger was part owner. Related story |
He's got his mouthpiece Tara Ragan pleading his case on TV and in other media, claiming they have no idea what could have given this result in a drug test.
And, whaddaya know… it was all untrue.
Now something you may not know about me is that I have a vice myself, if you can call it that. Daily I use my DVR to record People's Court. Yeah, I know. But there are things you can learn about people and the law, and one thing I've learned is that if someone lies once, his whole testimony is now suspect.
If he lied then, is he lying now? And if he says what he's saying now with conviction, how can you dismiss the conviction with which he told the first lies?
In other words, I'm not sure I'm buying this new story of what happened. AJ Allmendinger's testimony is no longer credible as far as I'm concerned.
In his own words, it goes like this:
He'd met up with a friend in Kentucky earlier in the week. "We were out early evening. I hadn’t been sleeping well — all season, really with the way things had been going, obviously, the expectations and everything like that."
He continues, "We were out, he had a couple of his friends with him and I was struggling to even stay awake. One of his friends said, ‘Oh, I have an energy pill that I take for working out.’"
He's having trouble sleeping all season, and yet he's tired at night, and he takes an "energy pill"? Ask yourself why anyone who's been having trouble sleeping, and finds himself unable to stay awake at night, wouldn't just GO TO BED. Instead, his solution is to take an energy pill to stay awake?
If something doesn't make sense, it's usually not true.
Next on the list of suspicious statements is that when NASCAR told him it was amphetamine, "I didn't even know what that was. I asked, 'Is that bad? Is that a big deal?'"
Really? You're a health-conscious guy who takes supplements and you don't know what amphetamines are? Okay, let's say you're not health-conscious and you don't work out or take supplements. Surely you've heard the name JEREMY MAYFIELD, right?
Claiming he doesn't even know what amphetamines are, and he had to ask if that was bad… Again, AJ, I'm not buying it. Your innocent routine is lost on me, and frankly, I resent that you think we're all so stupid.
As his story continues, he talks about all the pressure he was under, and how bad his season had been. He cites the heavy expectations; "The pressure to perform and things being out of my control…"
Have you ever heard an addict explain how they got into that boat to begin with? It usually sounds a little like, "The pressure to perform and things being out of my control…"
Again, I'm skeptical.
Then I wonder, what are the odds? What are the odds that he took ONE pill (that we're to believe he accepted basically from a stranger, and without knowing what it was) and that very week, just three days later, he was tested?
The way it reads to me is not unlike any other person who gets caught. Whether it's using drugs, having an affair, stealing from a department store… "It only happened the one time." Right.
It only happened the one time because you know that's all we can prove. But really, what are the odds that the one single solitary time AJ Allmendinger took amphetamines, he just happened to get caught?
Amphetamines will stay in your system for 1-3 days. Friday afternoon is when AJ found out he was to be tested, and he claims it was early evening Tuesday when he took the Adderall. Oh, what are the odds?
From the stories of Tara Ragan ("We still don't know what it was") to the fake innocent act of AJ Allmendinger, I'm afraid my sympathy is all run out on this one. RaceJournalonline.com