Hearing - Tues Finger Stretch

The satellite trucks are already here, and the media guys have learned the drill. Today is USADA's cross-examination of Landis.

USADA has plenty of clock time, so they can grill him as much as they like, and for all we know it can go all day. I expect a tag-team of Mr. Young as the nice cop, presenting logical traps, slowly and calmly; and Mr. Barnett as the bad cop, asking "when did you stop beating your wife" questions to provoke Landis into some kind of outburst.

I expect absolutely zero to come out of the examination of Landis that has any relevance to the question of whether the tests in question show doping or massive laboratory error. But it will be chopped up for your viewing pleasure, and be the first 80% of most print stories.

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The real meat of the day will come from Landis' expert Dr. Simon Davis. He's the technical director of Mass Spec solutions, a company that makes Mass spectrometry instruments. He is also one of the two Landis experts who was present at the LNDD for the testing of the other Tour B samples.

We expect Davis to present a story, tied up with a bow. It will explain details of bad process at the LNDD, making clear how and why all these results were obtained; that this will also reveal why LNDD has a 300% higher AAF rate for steroids than any other lab; and probably why all testosterone AAFs from LNDD for the last several years are of dubious veracity. Much ground work for this has been laid by previous examination, but Davis should bring it all together in a coherent picture.

The surprise is going to be the details. This is a big part of what we've been 10 months waiting for. If it's a good story, the Landis side will have made their case well. If it's not a convincing story, then we fall back to the previous "looks good to me!" vs. "the data doesn't clearly show" arguments.

Following testimony, we'll get some as-yet-unidentified rebuttal witnesses from USADA. I expect Dr. Brenna to re-appear; if he does not, it would seem to be a white flag by USADA on the science presented by Goldberger and Herr Doktor Professor Wolfram Meier-Augenstein.

(And I wish I could sneak a "von" in there as vell.)

If the science case isn't there, and USADA ends up arguing legal points of the code, and how things are "close enough", that will say something about their proclaimed "search for truth."

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One of the striking undercurrents of the hearing has been what Dr. Catlin crystallized as "WADA good citizenship."

This more or less translates to "Omerta" among people associated with WADA. The WADA "ethics" prohibit people from saying anything bad about WADA, a lab or any tests. So here they are, giving testimony that it "looks good to me!" and "the test results are reliable" as if there were any other words that would come from their mouths because of the "ethics" rules.

And we have an "independant" expert for the Panel who is, wait for it, the Director of the Rome WADA laboratory, Dr. Botre. Is he going to tell the panel anything that would call results or practice at LNDD into question?

With the exception of Dr. Shackleton and Mr. Papp, every single one of USADA's witnesses has been an employee of a WADA lab or a recipient of a WADA grant. And Dr. Shackleton had an IOC grant, and Mr. Papp has cut some deal with USADA on his sanction.

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Having tried and failed before, I'm not going to try to do a Q and A summary of the Landis testimony. It just moves too fast for me to follow, and I can only do it reasonably for the technical witnesses. I also expect the other media to do a very good job of that, because it is what they do best. Look there for the stories.

Instead, I'll try running impressions, more like Bill was doing while he was here. I'll try to get a seat inside so I can collect impressions, and hope this will meet the demands of the readers who can't get into the webcast.