And this time, the USADA is complicit with the mishandled procedures. As part of the arbitration process in deciding whether Floyd Landis needs to be sanctioned for doping in last year's Tour de France, the USADA asked for the remaining B samples to be tested. Landis' team had asked for another lab to do the testing other than the French lab that allegedly mishandled the doping tests last year and did leak the results to L'Equipe. Well, the same lab got to do the tests anyway, and without the rider's representative present to observe parts of testing, and even all of the testing for two of the samples. The USADA officials barred the rep from watching critical phases of the procedures, and then went home early, so that the French lab would not let the Landis observer even inside the building to watch the testing of those two remaining samples. Why did the testing go ahead? This is a blatant oversight of the athlete's rights to observe B sample testing, perhaps even malicious.
Now that the B samples have been used up, there is nothing left to test, which leads the Landis side to speculate that this latest round of testing was all a ruse set up by the anti-doping agencies to willfully destroy evidence. That may be a little far-fetched, but what is true, is that the strange events surrounding the testing, with barring the presence of the athlete's observer and the leaked results of the test to the same newspaper, cast more doubt on what happened to Landis, and reinforce old doubts. And worse, there is no more physical evidence of Landis' guilt, or innocence, of the doping allegations. As I predicted last year, I believe all the problems with the technicalities of the testing procedures would exonerate Landis by showing the tests to be inconclusive. This latest go-round does nothing to change that view. However, being declared innocent through bureaucratic incompetency will not clear the taint of wrong-doing. A clear guilty verdict would have been a much better outcome, for the sport of cycling. It would have been better to amputate with one clean cut, and move on to sanctions, than to suffer the thousand paper cuts of innuendo and intrigue.
I'm confused by your conclusion. Are you saying they should have just banned Landis immediately, even if he was innocent, to spare us the process?
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TBV
TBV:
ReplyDeleteAre you saying they should have just banned Landis immediately, even if he was innocent, to spare us the process?
Oh, dear Lord, no! What I'm saying, is that conclusive results, after all the athlete's rights have been observed and upheld, even if those conclusive results point to Landis' guilt, would have been better for International Cycling than what occured at LNDD. Here, Landis' rights have been trampled, again, and key parts of the testing were not observed by the athlete's rep, so that even if we have real positive results, as opposed to last year's (mis)interpetations of the data, there is so much room for speculation of foul play. And even if the tests show that Landis is innocent, because of all the lack of procedure, leaks to L'Equipe, and other incompetence, speculation can go the other way, wondering if Landis' results would have been different if the lab did its job properly. That kind of innuendo and intrigue will follow the anti-doping protocols for years, which is not good for the sport.