Hearing on May 14, New Slide Show.

The USADA hearing has been set for May 14, from reports of a press conference call this morning with Landis spokesman Michael Henson. Rant has more details because he was on the call. There is an audio recording of the call, but we don't have a copy or a link yet. It's on the subscription part of Bloomberg.

Reuters via the Scotsman confirms the date.

The date in May sounds about as late as it could be and hope to get any decision before the Tour start. Among the missing details about the hearing:

1. Who are the arbitrators?
2. Where will it be held?
3. What will be the controlling law?
4. What does 'open' mean?
5. What was the cause of the delay in scheduling?

Also from the call,

• Rant reports that Maurice Suh is going to Paris for the AFLD proceeding tomorrow, and that the sentiment of the call was that the proceeding was going to be adjourned pending the USADA action;
• The Landis defense has so far cost at least $400,000, against which the FFF has raised about $150,000;
• Arnie Baker presented a new version of his slide show.

The new slide show is in the old place on the FFF site, with the misspelled filename. Here's what looks new to us.

1. Comparison to FedEx bar coding for tracking showing how transport discrepency could have been avoided.
2. Discussion that a screening T/E of 4.9 is 99.5% likely to be a false positive
3. Notes clarification of 2006 WADA rule about CIR calling for metabolites with no parentheses around the 's'
4. Gives a cite to justify the the 0.8 subtraction from the andro - 11 keto to result in that not being a positive.
5. Table comparing Landis results to studies to justify the "all" positive criteria.
6. Quotes 'harmonization' as a goal of the code.
7. Cites Australian criteria by which Landis would be negative;
8. Cites UCLA criteria by which Landis would be negative;
9. Shows UCLA negative control samples would be positive by LNDD criteria;
10. Argument WADA should be auditing and sanctioning LNDD.

In our opinion, this bolsters the arguments for the ALL interpretation of the CIR, agreeing with Duckstrap's analysis previously reported here. We still remain wary of the contamination argument, as discussed on the wiki, and don't think there is a T/E case without the longitudinal data that has not been presented.

We still don't have any idea if the "whistleblower" documents shown with appropriate caveats by Baker in an appendix are authentic, and are trying to get a copy to examine. To date, there has been no denial of the contents by any of the allegedgly involved parties, only assertions that the letterhead was forged, and that something was taken "out of context."

ProCycling covers the call, but thinks it's the Tucson slide show with nothing new. It could be us that thinks there's new stuff in this one.