Hearing - Tuesday Morning Finger Stretch

It's quiet early in the press room. Paul Scott came in wondering if I'd seen anyone with a key, as the Landis team was arriving and couldn't get into their room. I'm showing up here because there's no network where I'm staying -- blessed relief in a way.

The overnight reports posted gave mixed report cards.
[MORE]

One of the ones I went looking for was by Jason Sumner of Velonews, who was typing away from a notepad as I signed off, and may have been the last one here. Of all the first-person accounts I've glanced at, his seems to have captured the most of the flavor of the scene, while the others are more pedestrian. That might come from taking time to let it simmer, and having walked around and sat in the courtroom during the proceedings. The scribblers here in the press room are stuck with what the camera shows, and what words we hear.

With the various video glitches of the day, our non-verbatim kind-of-transcripts seem to be of particular value. Hearsay says that some of the parties were reading it in the court, which is frightening in it's own way. That seems to trap at least one of us into keeping that up, tapping away to the video screen.

It's not completely altruistic -- trying to capture the gist of each exchange prevents drowsiness from taking over as the questioning drags on. I learned this sitting on a grand jury. This hasn't seemed as boringly technical as others have written, but we're pretty immersed in the case and can more or less follow what's happening. From the standpoint of proceedings, the testimony has been mercifully short of the spell-your-name, run-through-your-resume things I've had to sit through before.

I'll never get the details of the 5-alpha-beta-mumble-progenito-retro-adiol-bozone correct, so I don't really try. Where that seems like a problem, feel free to add corrections in comments.

One final anticipatory observation about what USADA seems to be trying to do:

• Even if parts of a test run/result may be inaccurate, this doesn't affect the 5a result they are hanging their hat on as the single metabolite positive. Specifically, if the 5b comes after the 5a in the chromatogram, problems in the 5b do not affect the 5a measurement results.

Sometime the USOC pressbox posted the witness list we ran down in the Sign off last night.

Comments have wondered about LeMond and Merckx. I can't imagine what facts LeMond would be able to illuminate, but we're given to understnad Merckx is available to talk about tactics. Most people don't think the whole issue of how/why Landis won is going to come up, so as amusing as it might be to hear Merckx and Allen Lim, it seems unlikely to happen. Lim has been seen hanging around, so he must be here for the duration as well.

Hiltzik just came in and wondered if after yesterday we were the only ones going to show up today. We are hearing other voices, so the ink-stained wretches are showing up. I am wondering if we're going to get another appearance by the radio guy who was saying the high bar for media circuses was OJ, and this wasn't even close.

TBV