Monday, October 16, 2006

Monday Roundup

Forums

Jacobs responds to scientist's comment. Saturday, we reported on comments made by a scientist about Jacobs's discussion of the Hamilton case. Says Ashendon missed the context of the talk on the show and went off on a personal attack. Jacobs takes the opportunity to defend other common complaints about his representation in doping cases:

  • The ADAs hide evidence;
  • Athletes make public statements after they've gotten crucified by ADA leaks.
  • Most of his cases focus on negotiating sanction, not fighting the science or labs.
  • He's successful in getting sanctions reduced, or dismissals prior to arbitration.
  • Ashendon wasn't an effective witness in SCA Promotions vs . Armstrong.
At DPF, the most interesting discussion has people digging into the spectroscopy around the contamination question. Over the weekend, there had been some thoughts the sample wasn't contaminated, but now we're seeing some questions of calibration and lower detection limits bring it forward again.

News
Ollie's Follies in San Antonio says you need amphetamines -- to get through the released documents, under the subhead "Stink Floyd".

Dirtrag covers the document release and summarizes the slide show.

VeloNews Monday mailbag is appalled by labwork, wondering if USADA is trying to make others look bad, glad Landis has the guts to go public and fight back openly, and praises Arnie Baker for his help.

Pez mentions document release

Boston Herald mentions release and defense.

Calendar
Landis to appear at fundraiser in Wisconson Friday Oct 20th

Blogs
Rant asks if the CIR results are real or fake, making a case that all metabolites should have the same ratios.
Khabar Bike covers documents in a brief, neutral way.
Slow twitch sunday covers, says Sunday's reaction was snark by columnists, but he points out the Podium Girls on TBV.

PJ, puzzled, assigns journalistic roles to the various bloggers. Compares TBV to Woodstein, though I'm more afraid of it turning into Ace in the Hole.

GTVeloce NZ appreciates the openness, isn't sold on the innocence.

Cyclebum seems to miss the point about the non-positive results, thinking the complaints are procedural rather than substantive.

Banshee Cycling thinks the Hip Resurfacing link on FL.com is creepy.

[end]


1 comments:

Anonymous said...

A little OT, but how does he negotiate a sanction reduction? Do other sports have wiggle room?

Cycling has a one size fits all policy; there does not seem to be any possibility of reduction. I don't think this is a good policy. I would much rather see harsh punishment for EPO and blood doping. While something like amphetamines or steroids should have a milder sanction. The current policy has the possibility of spiraling into farce, much like some U.S. sports where athletes are punished for recreational drugs while guys pumped up on steroids to comic book-like proportions continue to play.

It might be a good idea to reduce punishment for those who give up their doctors and pharmacists.

Looking at some of Jacob's past work, everything he says needs to be checked against sources. In Landis' case he is asserting that since only one out of four IRMS tests meets the positive threshold the test should have been read as negative. But from what I have heard the WADA protocol allows a positive with only one and the others can be used as corroboration. I tend to think only taking one is a little questionable. It is cherry picking the result you want. Why not take the lowest figure instead of the highest? Why not take an average of all four? But evidently that is not what the protocol says.

If I get some time this week, I would like to go through the A and B test results, comparing each "subtest". If the same test on the A and B samples shows wide differences then I would consider that significant since they are really testing the same batch of urine. Comparing different "subtests" done on the same sample require a knowledge of the testing that I don't have.

I seems to me that Landis has a very steep hill to climb. The two different tests, TE ratio and IRMS, present a serious problem. If he casts doubt on the TE ratio then USDA can point to the IRMS, or vice versa. The alleged contamination might be a nice way around this.

The feeling I got from the Hamilton case is that the authorities were not willing to entertain much in the way of technicalities. Issues about ways false positives could occur were raised but instead of agreeing that the test had not been tested for false positives they shot the issues raised down by saying they were irrelevent unless Hamilton could prove he fell into one of the categories that could cause a false positive. Not being able to produce his invisible twin, Hamilton was SOL.

I am not sure about America, but most of Europe has strict labor laws on depriving someone of the ability to practice their profession. I wonder what type of civil case could be filed. Danilo Hondo got a court judgement that declared his sanction a violation of his rights. Could a civil case be filed that the research backing the test is not sufficient to deprive someone of their right to work?

Rambling here...

--BD