Monday Roundup

This Roundup is started late, because there was no news. Y'all should get used to that happening here in the doldrums. But something did come up, so here is is.

Rulings

Sometime Friday, CAS made a ruling in the case of Jeff Adams that seems to us tilted towards sanity. There has been no press release (yet), and the award seems incomplete despite "final" designation. No major media has yet noticed, and we found out by email from Rant

Adams is a disabled Canadian athlete charged with cocaine use at an event, and he claimed a contaminated catheter from an earlier incident was responsible, and that there was no cocaine in his system at the time of the event. Richard McLaren was the sole arbiter at the original hearing, and there was supporting testimonly from Christiane Ayotte, both familar parties to followers of the Landis case. McLaren accepted the charge, gave a two year ban, and permanent disqualification of Canadian Government support. Adams appealed.

Adams presented first hand testimony supporting his claim that he was dosed with cocaine outside competition, and that he later urinated using a catheter that he inadvisedly saved for possible emergency use. After winning the event in question, at doping control he used this unwrapped, unsterile catheter, as there was no clean one available or provided by doping control.

Ayotte testified she thought he was doping, and the contaminated catheter couldn't have done it. Adams experts said it could.

In the original hearing, McLaren did not believe the story of the bar incident. The CAS panel "respectfully disagreed", finding the version not contradicted and fully corroborated by two reputable witnesses, and the lack of physical evidence and police report did not weigh against the testimony. The CAS panel found the contaminated catheter to be the source of the positive test result.

Out-of-competition cocaine use is not a violation, and the CAS panel corrected arguments by the ADA on that point.

Splitting the baby, the panel concluded that his results at the event should be DQ'd, but no further sanction is warranted. There was no cocaine in his body, only in the catheter. He was not "at fault" for cocaine in his body.

Paragraph 164 on costs is a unfilled ellipsis "(...)", so we don't know what the findings there may be. Bill Hue commented in mail,

Whenever someone "with all due respect"s you, the boom is going to fall. That is what the Panel did to Ayotte and McLaren.

Blogs
WADAwatch is a tad skeptical of the decision in the Pistorius case. It's probably a sign of healthy diversity of opinion that we don't seem to agree. WW thinks it's a decision in favor of the "show", and is probably dreaming of the "Up Close and Personal" features on him at The Cash Machine Games.