Landis Arbitration Recap

I normally don't link to anything found at the Los Angeles Times, because I find even political bias in sports columns, but today's story by Michael A. Hiltzik, in which he recounts the Landis arbitration proceedings, is a great read, and does not gloss over any pertinent details. I followed the hearing, almost live, by following the extemporaneous blog posts over at TBV, so I found no factual inconsistencies with the testimony. I've been quite annoyed with most coverage, since they can't even get the fact straight that Landis would not be the first Tour winner to be stripped of his title if he is found to be guilty of doping. To paraphrase an unemployed gasbag: "Maurice Garin. Google it."

Key facts about the incompetence at the Paris lab, LNDD, emerged from the testimony of the lab techs. The test results were confirmed as odd, or in error, by the USADA's own witnesses, and described as indecipherable by Landis' expert witnesses. And WADA's cover your ass attitude was exposed as written policy.

• LNDD uses only one metabolite to look for excess testosterone, when there are four, and most WADA accredited labs use three, such as the labs at UCLA and in Montreal. WADA guidelines allow for the use of only one metabolite. The metabolite examined, shorthanded as 5A, was outside the acceptable delta value of minus 3, at minus 6. It was this huge number that convinced most WADA officials, despite the lax procedures and protocols at LNDD, that it had to be a result of doping.
• LNDD never calibrated its testing machinery accurately. So badly was the calibration done, that LNDD identified a compound that was not in the specimens.
• Another of the four metabolites from testosterone found in urine, 5B, has a close statistical correlation with 5A, and has never been found with a delta value greater than 2 from the 5A value, in any published paper, even by those published by some USADA witnesses. In Landis' sample, the peak identified as 5B was at 4 units difference. The test was in obvious error from known science.
• So subjective were the LNDD testing procedures that the techs could not reproduce their results for observers.
• WADA ethics codes do not allow officials to testify on behalf of athletes suspected of doping or to dispute other labs' results.

These facts presented in testimony look like a slam dunk for Landis, but in the anti-doping proceedings, the lab tests are taken as valid, a priori, and the defense must show a violation occurred to invalidate the test. However, the testing at LNDD is so sloppy, it may work in USADA's favor, because Landis may not be able to prove a violation took place. With how sloppy the lab work was, there actually might have been excess testosterone in the sample. This is the USADA's position. The best Landis can do, is to convince the arbiters that the lab work is so sloppy, the tests have to be interpreted as inconclusive, and the violation comes from declaring an inconclusive test a positive. Landis can't even use the false positive argument, because the same lab, the same uncalibrated equipment, and the same tech, tested his other B samples from the Tour, and found excess delta values in some of them. For Landis, it just meant more inconclusive tests. For the USADA, it provides some corroboration for the doping interpretation. I don't know if Landis doped, but as far back as August last year, I've been saying that the tests results don't know either.