Landis Legal Matters

It's all up to the lawyers now, and that's even true for those that are not involved in the Landis doping scandal. The Belgian Team Director for Quick Step wants to sue Floyd Landis "for what he is now doing to cycling." Patrick Lefevere continues, showing his obvious disdain of Americans, "Why not? Why not take the American approach of dealing with things and apply it here?" And offers his personal reaction to Landis: "I feel like throwing up when I hear him." Well, the daggers are really out now.

Over at VeloNews, Robert Mionske lays out the legal rules the labs, the ADA's and the Cycling Unions are supposed to follow when a positive result shows up on the A sample, and how none of them were followed in Landis' case. There's so much good stuff there, you have to read the whole thing, but here are some choice bits dealing with the head of UCI and that french lab we love so much:

Under UCI Rules, "public disclosure shall be made by the Anti-Doping Commission or the National Federation" after the B Sample tests positive. [...] Okay, that's what's supposed to happen. Now here's what actually happened: The UCI announced that an unidentified rider tested positive in the A Sample, before the B Sample had been tested. [...] [T]he announcement [...] was made in clear violation of the requirement to announce after the B Sample had been tested. Additionally, the UCI announced that Landis' A Sample tested positive for an exogenous source, again before the required B Sample test. Although the UCI Rules permit public statements and identifications statements deemed "appropriate under the circumstances," the anonymous nature of the statements raises questions about why the statements were deemed "appropriate under the circumstances."

Here's another interesting thing: In commenting on the violation of the Public Disclosure Rules, UCI President Pat McQuaid observed that "We decided to make an announcement right away because we have been criticized in the past for not doing so-particularly in the case of an important rider." Well, besides implying that he was involved in the decision to violate the UCI Rules (remember, under the Rules it's the Anti-Doping Commission that is supposed to make the disclosure), that's interesting for another reason: "Past criticism" of the UCI for following its own Rules led to an official decision to violate the Rules, which in turn violated Landis' right to due process.

Furthermore, McQuaid offered a secondary rationale for violating the Rules: "Also, we know that the French laboratory has a close connection with L'Equipe, and we did not want this news to come through the press, because we are sure they would have leaked it." That comment raises another set of violations of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules. Under UCI Rules, samples are supposed to be anonymous-the laboratory is not supposed to know which sample belongs to which rider. If the lab in question had any information that would allow it to identify the samples, that would be a clear violation of UCI Rules, and would present Landis with a golden defense opportunity. Additionally, as McQuaid observed, the French lab has a history of leaking sample results to L'Equipe; these leaks are in violation of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules and the WADA Laboratory Code of Ethics. From the standpoint of due process, one would ask why the UCI violated its own rules, given the history of this lab, rather than requesting that WADA sanction the lab for past violations of the Anti-Doping Rules, as required under the WADA International Standard for Laboratories. [Emphasis Added]

With all the due process violations against Floyd, it is very easy to see the legal proceedings in the United States get dismissed, which I wrote about earlier here. I'm actually looking forward to the testimony in open court, because the corrupt practices of the UCI, the french labs, and WADA will be brought to light.