Road Bike Racing - Interesting take on Landis trial

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-landisfinal31may31,1,7004635,print.story?coll=la-headlines-sports&ctrack=1&cset=true

They go into a LOT of detail from the trial that I'd never read anywhere else.


It could be weeks before an arbitration panel reveals whether American cyclist Floyd Landis has a chance to retain his Tour de France title in the face of doping allegations, but one thing was clear even before marathon public hearings ended last week: Landis succeeded in putting the international anti-doping enforcement system on trial.

The open proceedings raised very public questions about the competency and test procedures of the Paris lab that ruled Landis' urine samples positive for illicit levels of testosterone. But they also exposed a rigid anti-doping enforcement system that could conceal lab errors and mistakes.

I'd like to read it, but you have to register...even more email...

I'd like to read it, but you have to register...even more email...

www.bugmenot.com is your friend.

www.bugmenot.com is your friend.

Doh work firewall pwned me!

Access denied by SmartFilter content category. The requested URL belongs to the following category: Criminal Skills.

use damnlatimes@dodgeit.com with password as the password

^^^^^ Worked fine. Thanks.

Nothing really new but well written. All but the most ardent FL haters admit that the lab did a less than adequate job. Will that be enough to get FL off? I don't know but would be surprised if the USADA is willing to risk the firestorm that would come if they exonerate. The biggest problem for FL is that this isn't a criminal trial in front of a jury of peers.

The other problem for FL is himself. He has lost all sympathy with me. The numerous excuses, the backwards hat when appearing in public and esp. the LeMond stuff. Ideally, I guess he gets off on legit technicalities but then disappears, he's an embarrassment.


:beer:

That's weird. I didn't have to register to read it. Try getting it off google news. Do a search for Floyd Landis on google news and see if it lets you in through that.

Doh work firewall pwned me!

Access denied by SmartFilter content category. The requested URL belongs to the following category: Criminal Skills.

Criminal Skills? I like it. Bugmenot has a Firefox plug in, which I use. You can probably track it down on the Firefox site.

Bugmenot aside, the article is interesting and shows how much more important the Landis hearing is than just for Landis' future or even that of professional cycling.

The specifics to the Landis case are interesting but ultimately, this case is bigger than him. The bizarreness of the hearing and the acknowledged mistakes have tarnished the credibility of WADA, its associated ADAs and its certified labs. Landis may lose his case but the ADA system has already lost a great deal itself.

The entire system is set up around the noble goal of cleaning up sport but the system's unjustness and self protection are just too striking to ignore(for example, all the WADA certified experts cannot testify to the truth unless it helps the case against the accused?). As all ADA parties are publicly funded (as far as I know) then their future requests for more funding will be harder (to whatever degree) to get approved.

The WADA system only has power if it is credible and this case has diminished that system's credibility. Even if you believe that the testing violations aren't great enough to throw out the evidence on Landis, the simple fact that violations were serious to cause concern should diminish the system's credibity.

I hope, starting with this article and the complaints of fans, athletes, and officials, that WADA and its system are reformed and improved in order to prevent this kind of circus in the future. If the work in this case typifies the work of WADA then they will never succeed in cleaning up doping as they are.

The article also brought up the fallout of this case. The evidence provided by the LNDD lab over the past couple of years is now suspect as their officials have admitted to making mistakes and other experts have accused that lab of ineptness at their jobs. How many accused athletes will use the same tactic against their ADA if accused by the LNDD lab? Time will tell on that one, however.

Bugmenot aside, the article is interesting and shows how much more important the Landis hearing is than just for Landis' future or even that of professional cycling.

The specifics to the Landis case are interesting but ultimately, this case is bigger than him. The bizarreness of the hearing and the acknowledged mistakes have tarnished the credibility of WADA, its associated ADAs and its certified labs. Landis may lose his case but the ADA system has already lost a great deal itself.

The entire system is set up around the noble goal of cleaning up sport but the system's unjustness and self protection are just too striking to ignore(for example, all the WADA certified experts cannot testify to the truth unless it helps the case against the accused?). As all ADA parties are publicly funded (as far as I know) then their future requests for more funding will be harder (to whatever degree) to get approved.

The WADA system only has power if it is credible and this case has diminished that system's credibility. Even if you believe that the testing violations aren't great enough to throw out the evidence on Landis, the simple fact that violations were serious to cause concern should diminish the system's credibity.

I hope, starting with this article and the complaints of fans, athletes, and officials, that WADA and its system are reformed and improved in order to prevent this kind of circus in the future. If the work in this case typifies the work of WADA then they will never succeed in cleaning up doping as they are.

The article also brought up the fallout of this case. The evidence provided by the LNDD lab over the past couple of years is now suspect as their officials have admitted to making mistakes and other experts have accused that lab of ineptness at their jobs. How many accused athletes will use the same tactic against their ADA if accused by the LNDD lab? Time will tell on that one, however.

That was a very well written post. I just have one small point: WADA never tested the Landis samples.
If you apply this microscopic hair-splitting to any lab, you will find 'problems', but the isotope test was done again with observers with the exact same result.

Landis may get off, but what sponsor in his right mind will put his name on a guy who have behaved in this manner?

BMC apparently will.

BMC apparently will.
Have they formally/informally picked him up or something? I know CycleOps has stuck with him, but as far as I know they don't sponsor an entire team...

Landis may get off, but what sponsor in his right mind will put his name on a guy who have behaved in this manner?

Perhaps CSC?

That was a very well written post. I just have one small point: WADA never tested the Landis samples.
If you apply this microscopic hair-splitting to any lab, you will find 'problems', but the isotope test was done again with observers with the exact same result.

Landis may get off, but what sponsor in his right mind will put his name on a guy who have behaved in this manner?
Thank you.

You are correct that WADA didn't do any testing, however, they continue to certify a lab that has had multiple problems of a similar nature over the course of several years. The LNDD lab first showed up as a problem during the revelations of the '99 B sample retests and they showed a real lack of integrity. Next this lab gets Landaluze off of his charges due to a very simple mistake of having the same tech test both the A and B sample (a major mistake in any lab). Finally they are forced to admit their mistakes in a very public way in the Landis hearings. These mistakes, taken individual, reflect poorly on the lab. Taken together they show a major failing by WADA (the governing body) in that WADA continues to certify the lab.

Do you really think these mistakes are "microscopic hair-splitting?" The mere fact that they were taken seriously enough by USADA to counter them in the way they did during the hearing betrays how USADA feels about the mistakes. So USADA was overreacting to this "microscopic hair-splitting?"

In other industries lab workers are not allowed to make similar "small" mistakes like these and still keep their jobs, with just a few mistakes the certifying body (eg US FDA) will pull certification from the lab until their deficiencies are corrected. As a specific example: using whiteout on lab forms can cause millions of dollars of wine to be destroyed at the port of import.

Again, if only the Landis case had such mistakes then I would probably trust WADA to help the lab and re-certify it but as this is merely the latest in a series of problems for the lab to which WADA has done too little (if anything) to date I cannot trust WADA to fix the lab any longer. Any other lab that screws up as bad as the LNDD lab has would quickly be taken to task and reformed- as demonstrated by the LAPD lab after the OJ debacle.

The LNDD lab should have been seriously investigated at least after their mistake got Landaluze off for his 2005 doping case before it was allowed to continued as a WADA certified lab. Having not done so made WADA equally responsible of their continued errors. Additionally WADA should have immediately started an investigation into the lab when the Landis related mistake were realized. WADA's failure to fix this lab undermines WADA's credibility.

The French like to play with the devil. It's not about paperwork on Larry King. Don't play with the devil.

I've felt from the start that the worst possible outcome for the sport would be Landis keeping the win on a technicality or procedural issue. If we all know he doped, and he gets away with it because someone whited out the wrong box on a form it would be pretty dismal.

I've felt from the start that the worst possible outcome for the sport would be Landis keeping the win on a technicality or procedural issue. If we all know he doped, and he gets away with it because someone whited out the wrong box on a form it would be pretty dismal.

I think everyone needs to read the article I posted. According to the testimony by some doctors AND the french lab, the lab had results that they couldn't explain and just stuck with them anyway.


Christiane Ayotte, the director of WADA's Montreal lab, who had characterized the lab's errors as mere "boo-boos" that shouldn't invalidate its findings, acknowledged under cross-examination that in one analysis of a Landis sample, the lab actually had identified a compound that wasn't there.

"What is it?" Landis attorney Howard Jacobs asked as the witness frowned at an errant analysis page.

"No clue," she replied.

Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, an expert on the analytical process used by the Paris lab, LNDD, testified for the defense that such sloppy work placed in doubt any number the lab produced, especially one as extreme as the 5A result.

"How do you know you don't have spurious results?" he asked. "If I was running this lab, before I was on the phone to say this guy's positive, I would rerun the tests to make sure the results stand up."

Under cross-examination by Landis' attorneys, Catlin and Ayotte acknowledged, if begrudgingly, significant flaws in the work of WADA's Paris lab.

Now tell me, if you're identifying a compound in a test that you have no idea what it is doesn't that mean that you can't verify the sample? how do you know it wasn't contaminated?! That the compound you can't identify is because someone tampered with the sample and put stuff in there and accidentally caused some other compound to also fall into the test tube? Someone explain to me how such a test can still PROVE doping.


Raising doubts about the 5A result, the defense argued that in the context of Landis' entire urinalysis profile, the figure looked more like a laboratory error than a credible analytical finding.

Defense witness John Amory, an expert in testosterone medicine at the University of Washington, pointed out that the 5A value always tracks closely the value of another metabolite, known by the shorthand 5B. No published study — either of those not testing positive for doping or known dopers, including two published by expert witnesses who appeared for USADA at the hearing — have ever found them to be more than two units apart, he observed. In Landis' results, the gap was four.


Defense exhibits and testimony established that an enormous amount of the lab's analysis involved subjective judgments by technicians — so much so that when asked to rerun their tests, the technicians were unable to duplicate their original results.

Despite the disparities, USADA argued, the subsequent analyses still established that Landis was guilty.

In other words, USADA didn't argue that they had found consistent results (which you'd assume would be needed to call someone guilty), but just that the inconsistencies didn't matter.

I've felt from the start that the worst possible outcome for the sport would be Landis keeping the win on a technicality or procedural issue. If we all know he doped, and he gets away with it because someone whited out the wrong box on a form it would be pretty dismal.

But when you're dealing with procedures that are in essence making or breaking a person's career, you have to have your ducks in a row and do things right.

If Floyd doped and then he gets off because the lab screwed up, in theory it's equally plausible that someone could not have doped but gets "caught" anyways because the lab screwed up.

You can't put in place a set of stringent rules designed to clean up the sport and then not adhere to the procedures that are necessary to enforce those rules.