Wednesday Roundup

News
FFF Tour of Innocence touches Chicago on March 10, also flogged by Rant. There are some changes in the format -- it's in the afternoon, at a theatre with about 200 or 250 seats, there may or may not be alcohol, and the slide show isn't in the program.

CBS4Denver posts video with Phil Liggett , the voice of the Tour de France, who believes Floyd Landis is innocent and will win his appeal:

"I ran into Floyd and we had a very quiet one-on-one around the dinner table," said Phil Liggett, a sports journalist who covers the Tour de France for Versus (formerly OLN) and CBS Sports. "He's so angry. During the week he announced his defense policies. There have been mistakes made on the testing and I believe he will win his appeal."

Also covered at TdFBlog.


VeloNews letters support Landis, and get some sympathy from the Editors:

[W]e have to agree that there is a reasonable possibility that the hearing panel may conclude that the handling errors may meet the standards established by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the Landaluze case. As the Court said, that isn't a "technicality," it's about repect for the process. Let's see how it plays out. The hearing is scheduled for May 14.- Editor

Blogs
PelotonJim references "required reading" in the difference between belief and knowledge by theoretical particle physicist Helen Quinn . Everyone interested in the Landis case, no matter what side of the fence you are on, should take time to read this.

Uncle Glen posts many pictures from Sunday's FFF presentation in San Pedro.

A Billion Bikes is dedicated to exposing cycling lifestyles from all around the world. This is episode # 1 from Copenhagen, Denmark and is introduced by a familiar face.


Team Fubar thinks the public is hypocritical about PEDs. The official position is against 'em, but we want the dingers.


Wish You Were Here writes of vacations, going to the final stage of the ToC, and spotting the "infamous" Floyd Landis with his posse in Long Beach.

Forums
At DPF, in the continuing discussion of IRMS measurement error triggered by our post about uncertainty, "jr" writes cogently:

[T]o make one of those arguments that lawyers love to snatch at, testosterone is a threshold substance as it is a naturally occurring substance so its concentration must exceed a threshold (above normally occurring human values) to trigger an investigation. The investigation branches per the prohibited list and the technical documents and the reporting guideline, one of those branches is to an IRMS test. If the IRMS test concludes with a finding that the testosterone is exogenous, then the concentration of the testosterone becomes irrelevant to the finding of the AAF. The IRMS test is not subject to any threshold.

And just in this explanation lies a part of WADA's rulemaking problems, to figure this out, you end up in a minimum of four documents, the SIL, the TD, the reporting guideline and the Prohibited List, all of which address some or all of the same points, but with subtle differences in the language. The reporting guideline is not mandatory but the TD is, and there are contradictions between these documents that I pointed out at length in a post long, long ago. The SIL and the prohibited list have subtle differences. The power of an NADA or CAS to reconcile rules, etc. is limited. They can't declare a rule invalid. They can't pick and choose to excise a portion of one rule to make another rule make sense. They are forced to ignore the problem, or as they did in one case I read, mention its wrong but they are forced to do what they believe is the wrong thing because they don't have a choice. Drafting rules isn't easy, cobbling together too many sources can become a disaster, expecially as different groups choose their language over some other rule drafted by committee, and they leave us with questions about does "x" mean the same as "y". The rules need a good old fashioned house cleaning so they may be reconciled.

Thought for the Day

"I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away." -jh-

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