Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tuesday Roundup

News
Part II of the Amber Landis Interview at Daily Peloton.

CyclingNews hears from Peirero on Puerto in El Pais: "We must fight against the dopers within the laws, together and without haste", says Oscar, concluding, "The leaks to the mass media have done damage". Samuel Sanchez adds, "All that has happened invites us to reflect on whether the controls that we have are totally trustworthy. There are many false positives, many errors,"

Mort Zuckerman of US News talks about "Our Cheating Hearts", uses "alleged" correctly.

San Diego Union Tribune columnist gives a boo to a certain witch,
and MSNBC's Celizic goes snarky on the Halloween costume, suggesting you go knock on Landis's door as Mr. Pound, bearing a sample cup. That'll sure go over big. [both courtesy thinnmann.]

Reading (PA) Eagle says Landis' defense claims "ring hollow"

Blogs
Lij Discovers the truth about a Phonak Jersey on Halloween: "Are you Lance Armstrong?"

Renewable Energy website compares usage to the KWH produced by Landis on the Morzine stage. Is that unit now a "Floyd?"

Stop Fooling Around has pictures of what happened in Madison after Landis left the fund-raiser, and some other pictures from earlier in a different post. The PG on the left looks like the Mrs, so no trouble there.

Feetwasher gets snarky about people not taking responsibility.

TourDeFranceLogue comments on the route unveiling.

Banshee is starting to sound mostly coherent, and thinks most folks don't care whether Floyd has heavy C13 atoms. He's been climbing up from his original mention here. Watch it, Dirt, or you might get taken seriously.

An old post from Steve-Z
(Sep 12) about the ADRB filing I'd missed. He's in the 'everybody dopes' crowd. But, he plugs TBV, so I can't resist. Obsessed? Hah!

Forums
At DPF, Duckstrap returns to the T/E confirmation test around post #365;

Floyd names a WHO in post #117 of this thread. He thinks the ADA side is into
winning!, not finding the truth, and suggests he needs money, but isn't outright asking for it:

All of this discussion needs a little more context from someone inside in order to be more productive. Think, for example, how often in sports or business or politics, the guys with the most money win. Money translates directly to power in the form of better experts on whatever field you happen to be playing. Now, if the situation were as Chris implies, we wouldn't be talking about the winning side but rather about truth prevailing and nobody would be considered winner or loser.

Unfortunately, several problems are preventing that from becoming reality.

First of all science is not "foolproof" in the pure form and even less so in the context of vaguely written standards (clearly so as to provide opportunity to hide mistakes and prosecute without proving what happened) based on studies kept secret from the accused.

The second, and more important problem comes from some philosophical misunderstanding within the antidoping agencies with respect to what they have set out to accomplish. They will not specificaly state the issue at hand, but the most obvious incriminating statement comes from Travis Tygart of USADA after publication of all of the provided documents (more to demonstrate to the world the refusal to provide sufficient documentation) when he stated that USADA had never lost a case in arbitration.

The problem lies in the perception that he is competing with the athletes just like in a race, he wants to win. I believe that in the history of USADA more than one innocent athlete has been prosecuted and therefore his statement, while it may seem true to him, is a lie if you consider the mission. When an innocent athlete is prosecuted and Tygart "wins" the mission loses (I know it is inevitable that some innocent people get punished, but for the sake of discussion, hear me out) and therefore Tygart also loses because he doesn't understand the purpose of the (government funded) agency which he represents.

The point is, of course I need lots of money, because I am up against an opponent with more money than I, and with the objective to win, not to find the truth. Had Travis Tygart actualy consulted with his "expert" when we asked for the case to be dismissed, he would have learned that it was in the interest of truth to drop the case, but now he is committed to winning whatever the cost to truth.
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