Hearing - Thurs Finger Stretch
"The Race to the Bottom"The DSL that was working last night at the place I'm staying was dead this morning, so here I am back at a quiet Pepperdine, where the wireless works.
A lot of people have written about the forthcoming testimony by Lemond, and there's little I feel like saying about it because it may come off as biased one way or another. I'll just say that Lemond was the one that Mrs. TBV and I started watching together in the tour, and Landis the last, and now it has come to this. Sad, sad.
An emailer wanted to know if his take was correct. The data files that Landis wants exist, but USADA doesn't want them to have them "for fear of tampering", and that Landis should have gotten everything he could possibly have wanted by having Botre do things for them in a few days a couple of weeks ago. This sounds incredibly lame to the emailer.
Well, it's pretty much a correct summary as far as I can tell. The only data I think is missing is the complete mass spectra from the S 17 tests, and maybe data on the contemporary calibration and stability runs. This may have been considered "not relevant" and not copied off before wiping the drive from the instrument.
I also agree it is bogus and lame -- it's clearly an attempt to prevent Landis from seeing what the data really says, which is often found by interactive exploration over time. It seems to me the fair thing to do would have been to give each side a copy of the data and the analysis software, with the data checksummed, and available for live demonstrations during the hearing. That is, if this were a search for the truth.
After session yesterday, I got a chance to ask Amber Landis some things I'd been wondering about -- What's going on in the family at the moment. Floyd and Amber are staying with the team about 5 miles away from Pepperdine, and not at home in Murrieta. Their daughter Ryan is staying with a classmate friend who's getting her to school and helping with homework. She doesn't know if it's a good idea to bring Amber to see anything, because it's pretty hard going even for the grownup.
Howard Jacobs just walked by with his roller briefcase, the first one in at 7:30, followed by the janitor checking the state of the trash cans in the room.
The parties have parking in the faculty lot, with reserved spots. From this, we learn:
Howard Jacobs went for the slightly eccentric Audi Sedan in the foreground. We don't know who belongs to the ground pounder in the back.
While Maurice Suh goes for the pure power AMG E55.
Hiltzik walked in to save his preferred spot, and is going down to Starbucks to load up.
Now the rest of Team Landis have rolled by, at 7:40. The place is starting to come alive.
Floyd wandered by, wearing a black jacket, shirt and tie. Mourning?
At 8:05, Young goes into the courtroom.
14 comments:
Thanks TBV I feel like I am there, My best to all.
str
I think, now, that the arbitrators are on trial along with Landis.
Hi TbV...
Am glad that one of Landis' attorneys asked Mlle Mongongu if she had ever been asked by De Ceaurriz about leaks... the noose tightens.
Also hope you caught the news from Paris: Roland Garros (Tennis French Open) is doing its drug-testing at Montreal!!! they're going 3433Km instead of 18Km down the road...?!
I blogged both those...
ZEN
I'd imagine Lemond's role is simply as a character witness to confirm that doping is rife in professional cycling and how the dopers are ruining the sport. Unfortunately those are exactly the sort of comments which get lapped up by the media and will help put the arbitrators on the spot ... i.e. how could they possibly justify letting Floyd off, given the extent of the problem and the damage it is doing to the sport. This is more about manipulating them (the arbs) than anything else.
I'd be amazed if he passed judgement on Floyd. Amazed.
once again you guys rock!
I'm sure Floyd appreciates all your work...hopefully he takes you guys all on a ride sunday or something...that would be awesome.
Well here goes another day of getting very little work done.
Thanks
James
Anybody else having trouble logging into todays proceedings?
it looks like the Landis Hearing link on the CVN site is missing, and there are no listings for streaming coverage and no results for search on "Landis".
looks like it is back up now
I think at couple of discovery items are in play and the subject of possible confusion. The delivery of the log files (i.e. evidence of overwriting files and taking breaks) was resisted by Larry Bower and there was mention of possible alteration. I thought that I heard that Landis's team received the electronic data files on 5-may-07, 9 days before the hearing. I assume that Suh was estimating several weeks to do a full analysis of that data. But, I have heard no mention of the existence of the Mass Spec data.
I should have left the window open overnight....I'm getting you are not authorized to view the requested content on several computers here.
any suggestions?
I'm getting the same response. This is not the day to miss it..
Suggestion: please consider adding the names of the arbitrators and attorneys for both sides to this site's glossary.
What I fail to understand is how LeMond has any valuable testimony to the case. I could see if he was a Phonak teammate who may have seen or heard something in the hotel room or on the bus or whatever. Or if he were part of the crew, and saw a suspicious package with Floyd's name on it that might have contained drugs or supplements, etc. Where was he exactly while the tour was going on last year? Did he have any access whatsoever to Floyd or Phonak? To my way of thinking, if he did not, then all he is doing is offering his opinion, not any helpful or relevant fact. If any of us were on trial for our character, we'd all have those who will say we are wonderful and competent and those who will say we are not. I really can't see how someone who was in the tour twenty years ago has anything valuable to offer that pertains to this particular case. Phil Liggett could give better testimony -- at least he was there and has current interaction with the people at the Tour!
I've been trying to figure out this discovery issue from yesterday regarding the 44/45 document. I think I originally let Young make me think this was a bigger deal than it is.
When Mong. first mentioned she would need the m44/55 data, Suh said: "I would like to point out for the record that the very document the witness has said would be necessary to establish interference, we have never received, and we asked for them. Because we do not have the documents, we are going to stop cross now, and reserve right to recall this witness."
So he was willing to suspend the cross right there. Young jumped in (obviously waiting for the first opportunity to get on the record that no more information would be coming), but in that first set of back and forth, Suh concluded: "don't believe matrix interference is applicable, but would be happy to resolve this."
In other words, he said, even before Young's redirect, that this particular document didn't matter, but if they wanted to settle this document matter now, then that's fine with him.
Then after the break, they come back to argue about it and it closes with this:
[Young?] We had a process we went through where everyone went to a great deal of effort, everybody went to paris, they had a chance to have them reprocessed any say. If they wanted the a's as big as the b's they could have asked.
This is USADA talking, but still this makes it sound like they do have this data for the b's. So did they get the mass spec data for the b samples (on May 5)?? But they didn't get the full detail for the S17 A, because it doesn't really matter anyway??
Then:
Campbell: my problem, is that the need was a response by a witness. How would Mr. Suh have predicted the future to predict a need for this data?
YOUNG: if he knew he needed it, his expert had every chance. If the witness says she can look and resolve that's fine, or if not, that's fine.
BARNETT: We discussed this on the April hearing, the discussion of C13
SUH: the chromatogram YOUNG used as an example is good. This one is not entirely visible in the mass 44/45 scan. We cannot predict anyone would would ever say about these peaks. It would not be reasonable to blow up every single peak. I'm sorry if we're not clear.
Then he drops it. I don't think Suh would apologize about not being clear if this matter was important to him. This conversation remained limited to the m44/45 for this particular peak, which Suh says he didn't really care about anyway.
The big question is, does Young's comment mean that Suh has the complete data for the B samples? And it was just provided on the 5th?
Sorry so long in comments!
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