Impressions On The Landis Verdict

After having digested the early news reports, the majority decision, the dissenting decision, and various reactions from some of the people involved, I came away with two impressions of the USADA.

(1) They're pissed at WADA. I heard a lot of relief in the voices of the American anti-doping executives that the case was decided in their favor. It seemed to me they really argued amongst themselves on whether to defend the doping violation, especially after seeing all the documentation from the former LNDD. I saw this ire especially in how they defended the isotope test, which the panel upheld the results. After every instance of sloppiness, incorrect interpretation of results, or just plain ineptness, they kept going back to how the procedures were still handled "within" ISL codes and standards. The arbitrators only had to decide each point on a "balance of probability," but with such a low threshold of what constitutes proper procedure for chain of custody, or how many metabolites should be included in a doping test, almost any result could satisfy ISL code. And the arbitrators were not happy about it. In their conclusions, they even talk about how the Landis expert witnesses came from forensic backgrounds, where assumption of guilt is not in practice, whereas in WADA labs it is. And they signal to WADA that perhaps this should not be so considering how lax the ISL protocols are, and whether this assumption of guilt has even created a culture of laziness at WADA accredited labs. So, the USADA was able to defend its perfect record against dopers, but they're pissed about doing it in this case, because of the piss-poor evidence they had to use.

Which leads to my second impression: (2) The USADA is not going to carry WADA's water anymore. The panel basically covered WADA's ass in allowing this guilty verdict, saying the substandard ISL protocols for chain of custody, calibration of testing equipment, and interpretation of results are all good enough. The USADA knows that at UCLA and Montreal, the labs would not have found a doping violation. The arbitrators had to throw out the T/E ratio test results, and then they had to bend over backwards citing ISL procedures to allow the IRMS results as valid. The USADA does not want to defend a bad test again. The arbitrators in the majority decision recused themselves from finding ISL violations, because they did not want to get into that sticky business, even though several were obvious. I knew that the majority arbitrators were in pure face-saving mode when they discounted almost all the testimony of the guy who invented the machine that runs the carbon isotope test. You have the guy who made the machine telling the court that the French lab techs were doing it wrong, and they don't believe him? No, it was because the ISL protocols allowed such shoddy work. It is unprecedented that an arbitration panel would criticize a WADA-accredited lab, and the ISL protocols, but they did it in this case. This is a big signal to WADA, get your act together, because we're not saving your ass again.

This open rebuke of WADA by the panel is probably why Dick Pound has not been noising off as he usually does. We've heard from the Tour Director, Oscar Pereiro, the UCI director, the old Phonak coach, even the french lab director whining about how bad he looks, but not Dick Pound, who is usually first in crowing about guilty dopers. Who knows what other national anti-doping execs have been saying to him off the record? I can bet that it has not been pretty. Everyone talks about cleaning up cycling, but with the larger volume of tests that need to be done to get there, they need to clean up the ISL protocols too, otherwise more innocent athletes are going to get caught up in an indiscriminatory net. I hope Floyd Landis appeals to the CAS, because this time, there won't be the presumed 2-1 vote that there was at the beginning.

One last thing: I always wondered why Dick Pound seemed angry at the USADA for clearing American athletes of international doping violations more often than not. He attributed it to some nationalistic attitude. I think the Landis case shows the level of evidence the USADA usually had to work with, and why they defended only a few of those positive doping violations.