The Winnowing: WADAwatch

WADAWatch was started because the sometime-jurist author was taken aback by what he believes is the horrible wording of the WADA Code. It intrigued him enough to take vacation time to go to a WADA Conference for the press and meet and speak to many of the principals. His meta-legal analyses of The Code seem to us essential reading to anyone interested in rationalizing The Code. (Unfortunately, that may not include many of the current stakeholders.) One of the points he finds most troubling is the abandonment of the Quigley rule, something which seemed to have formed good guidance to CAS panels before the adoption of the WADA Code.

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As Trust but Verify prepares to shut down this superb Encyclopaedia Floydia, many of its readers are still awestruck at the outcome(s) of the Floyd Landis case(s): a victory fully enjoyed by 'the anti–doping movement' in arbitration, and withdrawal of his US Court case. It was late–summer 2008, when WADA president John Fahey announced WADA's contentment: the 'aggressive campaign against' that movement by Floyd Landis came to its arbitrated end.

And only two weeks ago, Landis withdrew his US Court case, leaving unexamined a vital, major scrutiny of the explicit conflicts of interest that permeate the private world of major sports legal arbitration.

The facts and evidence of Floyd's case stood for something profound: the fundamental concept that even Athletes have civil rights, and that a quasi–legal system of Jurisprudence/private arbitration that sought to retain monopoly control of those Athletes' lives, should uphold Western legal ideals in according those rights.

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The Landis Decisions offer proof that such is not to be, as long as a 'small group of insiders' is permitted to prioritize the protection of their own livelihoods, and the incestuous legal fraternity holding this monopoly power, throughout WADA, and Agencies, Labs and ADOs.

Those of us who were aghast that Dick Pound, former WADA president, might be installed as president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, may wonder at what influence the man had had, in the CAS Decision confirming Floyd's positive Testosterone test. With the Landis Decision, CAS moved away from its prior legal basis, expressed in the famous Quigley Rule. That 15 year–old ruling called for implementation of a fair system, where 'rules are clear' and deviations from their meaning were often quashed, as we'd seen in the Landaluce case. WADAwatch believes, but certainly cannot prove, that the Landis Decision issued by CAS had some profound ex parte input from Pound: the former “Voice of WADA”, former candidate to become CAS' president. A Pyrrhic victory for the Omerta of WADA.

However, because Professeur de Ceaurriz and his LNDD lab techs, obsolete machines and tainted laboratory documentation, their pro forma COFRAC certification, the whitewashing French AFLD Ministry, vocal Dick Pound and WADA, with its 'independent expert witnesses' and institutional discrimination(s), supported by the USADA and Richard Young, who altogether (USADA and WADA) spent several millions of dollars, were fully supported by both the AAA Panel (majority), and the CAS Panel:

We do not know how, when, where and, to what degree
Floyd was ingesting Testosterone, if at all;

Thanks to Floyd Landis' legitimate, unnecessarily–expensive defense and appeal:

We do know how LNDD, USADA, WADA, AAA and CAS
confirmed theWADA Code's systemic viability
– in spite of having exposed its every
substantive and procedural flaw.

In other words: we don't know 'how Floyd was wrong', but we do know 'why WADA was right'.

Perfectly.

We may also never know, what honest inadequacies are, legally, nor what differentiates the acceptance of a WADA accredited lab having followed the concept(s) of rules (CAS Decision), rather than following the 'letter of the law'. Gone forever, are French accusations that Floyd's friends 'hacked' into the French lab's computer system (which some surmise was a way to disinform how evidence was destroyed, to erase traces of French shenanigans...), and gone, for some time, are the concepts expressly displayed in the WADA Code Fundamental Rationale.

We will never know why France was allowed to bring its renegade case against Floyd without being in violation of WADA Code Article 15.4, nor why its lab, in violation of Article 6.4, received full support throughout Floyd's disciplinary process. We will never know why USADA was not required to inform WADA of 'departures' (Article 7.1/7.2) before Floyd had to spend millions trying to prove those multiple, inexcusable LNDD failures. And the list goes on...

Someday Athletes may realize that the present system only serves to act as an Insurance Policy, protecting Event Organizers from Sponsorship withdrawal. WADAwatch hopes to aid Athletes, by simply encouraging WADA to enforce internally, the words of its Fundamental Rationale, not the least of which being: “Respect for rules and laws”.

Thanks to our friends, who made Trust but Verify THE daily Floyd site.