Thursday Roundup

News
In a lighter mood, SNEWS reports Landis will participate in a team relay at the Teva Mountain games in Vail on June 2-3. Must be for yuks -- how can he have time to do any serious training?

Landis issued a statement about B sample testing, demanding the B's get split and also tested at UCLA, and saying USADA has denied that request.

AP via SuperCycling says that UCLA can't do any testing, citing Catlin as saying "the machine is down."
SportsIllustrated/CNN runs pretty much the same story.

We also received a copy of the April 3 document request by USADA's outside counsel, from which DeSimone and Hiltzik made their earlier reports; Landis issued a public response to the document request.

The AFP also prints the Landis statement which is picked up by The Raw Story, Fox Sports as well as The Turkish Press .

ESPN.com contributor Bonnie DeSimone writes about yesterday's arbitration ruling stating that among other things it allows USADA/WADA to test Floyd Landis "B" samples from previously tested, though negative, "A" samples from last summer's Tour de France:

Landis and his legal and public relations team are vehemently protesting the B sample testing, saying it violates his rights and standard laboratory and anti-doping procedures, and contending that the French lab is unfit to conduct the tests.In a statement released through his legal defense fund, Landis said USADA's tactic is a legal red herring designed to prop up a shaky case and further sap his side of time and money. His hearing begins May 14 in Malibu, Calif., at the Pepperdine University School of Law. Landis recently told ESPN.com he is not sure he has the financial resources to appeal the case if the panel rules against him."USADA is on a fishing expedition, trying to elicit a result that confuses the clear scientific evidence that refutes the allegations against me ; by having these samples tested at a compromised and conflicted lab,"

ABC12 carries the same piece which also points out that Christopher Campbell , the arbitrator on the panel selected by the Landis team, opposed the majority ruling made public yesterday:

Christopher Campbell, a former U.S. Olympic wrestler who was selected for the panel by Landis and has been a consistent advocate for athletes' rights in past cases, wrote a strongly-worded dissent citing the "absurdity" of the testing and the lab's conflict of interest. The Laboratoire National de Depistage du Dopage (LNDD) has been under constant fire by the Landis camp which cites sloppy technical and bureaucratic procedures and errors in past cases, creating LNDD's obvious vested interest in having the 'B' samples somehow corroborate the lone positive 'A' result, Campbell wrote. Campbell added that sample testing is supposed to be anonymous and called his fellow arbitrators' ruling "inappropriate.""The admission of evidence obtained in clear violation of the WADA code smacks of an uneven application of the rules," Campbell wrote. "To allow such conduct strips this adjudication of the appearance of fairness."

Also made public was a USADA request from April 3 for some of Landis' private medical records, contacts with any politicians he may have spoken with about his case, messages Landis may have posted on public forums about the case, and financial documents related to certain FFF contributions:

USADA also upped the ante earlier this month in a request through its outside law firm, Holme Roberts & Owen, for documents that include medical records and bills dating back to January 2005; Landis' posts on Internet message boards, including discussions of his case on the dailypeloton.com forum; and a list of contributors to the Floyd Fairness Fund, his legal defense fund.

In a letter dated April 3, attorney Matthew Barnett also asked for "documents submitted" by the Landis camp "to any government official in connection with Mr. Landis' efforts to influence, pressure or coerce governmental officials to instigate investigations of USADA or otherwise interfere in this adjudication process.

The CyclingNews also takes note of yesterday's ruling release by the Landis case arbitrators, as does VeloNews.


AP via Yahoo! runs a report on the aftermath of the Duke Lacrosse non-case, and thinks the ex-DA may be a justified target of a law suit for non-privleged comments made by Nifong outside the context of the court.


Blogs
Le Societe Des DemonCats thinks that Floyd Landis, is clean, but IF they find out he is not Floyd had better watch out!

Dugard writes a post about hope, which he has been praying for, and how discouraged he is by yesterday's arbitration ruling in the Landis case:

But news of the yesterday's ruling against Floyd Landis was extremely disheartening. He's being railroaded, and USADA is going to make damn sure that he gets stripped of his Tour title and suffers a two-year suspension. It's a done deal. The fact that they want to re-test B samples, even though the A has been proven clean, tells me that they will not be satisfied until he goes down. I love that USADA also wants to be provided with a list of donors to Landis's legal fund, and a comprehensive list of the comments Landis has made against USADA. Landis is right to refer to all this as harassment, because that's what it is. They told him last summer that they would break him down and make him "poor like Tyler" and that's just what they're hoping to do.
In the face of all that, it's very hard to hope that Landis will be cleared. Very, very hard.

Rant has read the ruling. He doesn't see much good news for Landis, and very little in the nature of the procedings from USADA that looks like fair play. Then again in Part 2 Rant thinks there MAY be some good news after all.

Ashevilleallan just wants the Landis case to be "over with" already!

Unholy Rouleur finds Wendy's use of the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" disturbing, and then gets around to cycling. Comparing to the Duke Lacrosse case, he thinks that those who rushed to judgment early on in the Landis case look pretty dumb.

Being a grownup means that sometimes you have to admit you just don't know, and until you do, you'll keep your mouth more or less shut about the question. The reason this is the grownup way is because reputations can be damaged, men and women destroyed, by loose lips. It's hard to keep our mouths shut and just shrug, because we all want to seem in control all the time. But we aren't, and we shouldn't be ashamed to admit that the knowledge of some things is beyond us, at least some of the time.

Pommi thinks that yesterday's arbitration ruling proves one thing more than any other, that USADA/WADA are trying to bleed Floyd Landis dry. Later, he goes over the documents and statements of the day, under the headline "USADA's Fishing Expedition."

Biking Bis also notes yesterday's arbitration ruling, and gives TbV a plug along the way.

Hernando go lightly feels it's completely inappropriate that USADA is going ahead with the testing of Floyd Lanids' "B" samples from last summer's Tour.

ArchPundit has sworn off politics today to comment on the state of the Landis case, and he laments that due to circumstances beyond all control we may never know the real truth.

Throwing Smoke is starting to think that the Landis saga will NEVER end -- but that Landis never quits.

O'Kelley's Reality Check picks up the earlier Network World discussion of the "wiki defense".

Forums

The USADA Digs Deeper thread over at the DPF is exploring the request by USADA to obtain from Landis an FFF contributor list as well as posts on message boards, and contacts with politicians.

The discussion on the First Arbitration Ruling also continues over at DPF, along with new threads about the USADA Doc requests, and Landis' request for split B testing at UCLA, Landis' accusation USADA's tactics are "un-American",

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