Wednesday Roundup

Have a frightfully spooky Halloween!

News
The NY Times publishes a story this morning about the kind of drug testing being done in Major League Baseball, saying that teams always receive advance notice which eliminates the element of surprise. Teams are however cautioned not to tell players:

According to Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations and human resources and the official who oversees the sport’s drug-testing programs, team officials are not supposed to tell players that tests will be conducted. He said a person with each club — often the general manager or the assistant general manager — is responsible for arranging for tester access and for space to be set aside in the locker rooms for tests.

Under the program, our players do not get advance notice about tests,” said Michael Weiner, general counsel for Major League Baseball’s Players Associatio

But officials from three teams confirmed that their clubs receive advance notice of testing, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss testing publicly. One official said his team finds out about testing nearly two days ahead of a visit. Another said trainers are routinely informed the morning of testing and begin setting up for the testers in the clubhouse.

Anti doping experts say that this subverts the purpose of the program and that surprise is necessary in order to get samples that have not been altered to mask PED use.


The CyclingNews reports today that the professional cycling teams associations (the AIGCP and the IPCT) think that the fight against doping should not be fought using public prosecution and they refer specifically to the Andrey Kashechkin case where a violation of human rights defense, as concerns doping controls, is being used. In a CyclingNews Update UCI President Pat McQuaid lambastes the Spanish cycling federation for not pushing the pursuit of OP:

"The Spanish authorities don't want to battle against doping," said the 58 year-old Irishman in an interview with dpa. Key events have likely led to McQuaid's belief: Judge Antonio Serrano shelved all Puerto cases this spring, and recently, before the World Championships, the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) refused to agree with the UCI President in not allowing its cyclist Alejandro Valverde to race in Stuttgart.
"I lost the hope; the clarification of Operación Puerto will never come."

The Province says that the Symmetrics Canadian cycling team wants to take the next step and become competitive enough to seek entry into the Grand Tours. But, this takes money and sponsorship and unfortunately when they go into a corporate boardroom to seek funding, the first subject to come up is Floyd Landis and doping.

Arizona Central.com has more "clever" ideas for those who need last minute Halloween costume inspiration.

ESPN posts a story about UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk who has tested positive for nandrolone use and has hired the "Johnnie Cochran" of high profile athlete doping cases, including Floyd Landis', Howard Jacobs.

Blogs
Library Thing opens up a page for "Positively False".

Rant is still researching the cortisone/glucocorticosteroids testing methods that would detect the presence of glucocorticosteroids in samples at different WADA-accredited labs, and what he is finding is that there are no standards.

QuickRelease.Tv grabs the slightly overblown 2008 Tour de France route vid from Youtube which this year is blessedly without shattering mirrors.

Drug Use 2 posts an infomercial of sorts about the benefits of hypnosis in battling PED use in track and field. Wonder if Pat McQuaid and Dick Pound have seen this?