Closure for Contador?

by Rant on January 29, 2012 · 8 comments

in Alberto Contador,Tour de France

In the next few days Alberto Contador should learn his fate. [Update: The CAS has postponed announcing the Contador decision until February 6th according to CyclingNews.com.] Will the Court of Arbitration for Sport exonerate him of charges he used clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France or will they find him guilty and impose a suspension and require the forfeiture of his Tour win, his Giro victory in 2011 and all other results since he tested positive for the drug in July 2010? At this point, it’s anybody’s guess.

On the surface, the case should be fairly simple and straightforward. Current World Anti-Doping Agency rules state that even the slightest trace of clenbuterol is enough to cause a positive test result. And current WADA rules impose strict liability on the athletes, meaning that unless Contador can find a compelling and convincing explanation of how the clenbuterol showed up in his system, he should be getting a two-year, no-expenses-paid vacation from the world of professional cycling.

I’m not saying that’s the right or just result. Just that under the rules, that’s how this case should go. But anti-doping cases are funny things. The obvious result is not always the result that occurs.

Given the general framework of how this all works, the ball is in Contador’s court when it comes to proving his innocence or his inadvertent exposure to a banned substance. Contador’s defense has been that he ate contaminated beef, which in turn led to his positive test result. In some parts of the world (Argentina, China, Mexico), this would be easy to believe.

But Contador has a very big hurdle to overcome in proving his thesis, and that’s the fact that he doesn’t have a sample of that meat which could be tested to prove whether or not it was contaminated. And he has no way of proving the provenance of his steak. Where did it come from? Your guess is as good as mine. Spain? Most likely. Argentina? Possibly, Argentinian beef is exported to Europe, so it’s within the realm of possibility.

Still, the rebuttal from the other side can be summed up in the catch phrase popularized by Clara Peller in those Wendy’s commercials from back in the 1980s. “Where’s the beef?”

So, a few weeks back came this ESPN.com story (hat tip to Larry for prodding me with the link) that lawyers for WADA and the UCI were upset about how the hearings went. Apparently, they almost bolted the hearing due to a surprise move by the panel.

Contador says the clenbuterol came from beef he ate while on the Tour. Lawyers for the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, presented the CAS panel with another scenario for the failed test: Clenbuterol entered his body via a banned, performance-boosting blood transfusion.

The three CAS judges, however, stunned WADA lawyers by blocking oral testimony from one of their witnesses, Australian doping expert Michael Ashenden, hearing participants told the AP.

Hearing participants said Ashenden, if allowed, could have expanded on the theory that Contador may have had a blood transfusion on July 20, followed the next day by an injection of blood plasma.

The panel was right to block Ashenden’s testimony, though probably not for the reasons they did. WADA and the UCI don’t need to prove how the clenbuterol got into Contador. Contador does, and without another sample from the same animal, he’s really not got a very strong case. On the other hand, going for the blood transfusion possibility requires that WADA and the UCI convince the panel that the test for plasticizers was fit for purpose and that the test results can only be explained by a blood transfusion. To my knowledge, this test hasn’t been approved for that purpose, yet.

So, even if the test is valid, WADA and the UCI are wandering into murky territory by trying to refute Contador’s story. And, as I’ve said, they don’t have to. Their own rules state that they don’t need to prove anything other than that the drug was there. Contador has to prove why and how, and that only guarantees him a reduction in penalty, not full exoneration.

So why in the world would WADA and the UCI go off into the weeds and offer an alternative theory on how the drug got into Contador’s system? That question has puzzled me for  a while. For Contador to win, he must prove his exposure was a result of environmental contamination. And that’s perhaps what WADA and the UCI want to avoid. Environmental contamination throws a huge monkey wrench into the strict liability concept.

Why? Because as testing labs become more proficient at detecting ever smaller concentrations of chemicals, they run into the very real situation where extremely small amounts of environmental contamination could trigger a positive test result. I don’t know the situation in Spain, but in parts of the US it’s possible to find trace amounts of all sorts of prescription drugs in the water supply. And some of those drugs could, of course, be banned in athletic competition. If environmental contamination can trigger a positive result, WADA would have to move from strict liability to establishing threshold values which trigger a positive test result, instead.

And that presents the real possibility of cheaters finding ways to use just enough of a drug so they won’t test positive. On the flip side, if the thresholds are set low enough, the benefit of such a doping approach could be reduced to nil. But, establishing thresholds for each and every drug becomes a nightmare for the ADAs. The thresholds could be quite different from one drug to the next.

So offering up an alternative theory could be a way that WADA and the UCI seek to avoid dealing with the contamination issue. A win is a win, as the old saying goes. Who cares if it’s an ugly win or an elegant win? But it appears that WADA and the UCI weren’t able to completely present their alternative theory, and that they were so upset by the panel’s decisions that they may be paving the way for another appeal, this time into the Swiss federal courts. As the ESPN.com article relates:

… the WADA team filed a written complaint at the end of the four-day hearing. It alleged the CAS panel failed to respect WADA’s right to be heard, including barring questions to Ashenden on the transfusion scenario.

If the CAS clears Contador, this complaint could form part of a possible appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s supreme court. It can review CAS decisions on procedural grounds but would not rehear Contador’s case or the merits of the arguments presented. In practice, the court rarely sends cases back to the CAS.

If that happens, the Contador case may not be decided anytime soon. Which means that cycling fans may face the prospect of watching the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France not knowing whether Contador’s most recent wins in each race will be nullified. So much for speedy justice in the sports world.

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Bonds and Braun

by Rant on December 19, 2011 · 15 comments

in Barry Bonds,Baseball,Ryan Braun

Tonight, we look at baseball. Truth be told, I don’t follow the sport much anymore. Haven’t done so since about 1994. Why? Well, that’s a story for another day. Two stories have come up in the last week or so that tie into the topic of doping in “America’s Pastime” and one of the stories has a new, unusual twist to it.

Hey batter, batter, batter…

First story up, is that of Ryan Braun, an outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, who apparently tested positive for an oldie-but-goodie, testosterone. At least, that’s what a number of stories I’ve seen have suggested. No great surprise that a baseball player would come up positive for man-juice. As I mentioned in my book, steroids have been a part of baseball since at least the late 1960s. And testosterone is — you guessed it — the father of all anabolic steroids (as far as performance-enhancing drugs, that is.)

Even though I live in Milwaukee, I’m not a follower of the Brewers to any great extent. Just enough to nod my head when someone at work makes a comment about last night’s game. So that’s a round-about way of saying I’ve noticed the story, but not had much of a reason to write about it until now.

This story has all the usual elements. Athlete tests positive. Someone leaks the results. Sportswriters go into overtime, writing up the story and getting some of the elementary facts wrong.

(Braun failed both the T/E ratio and the CIR tests. Somehow, the vast majority of baseball writers haven’t learned that a high T/E ratio doesn’t automatically mean excess testosterone, it just means the relationship to testosterone to epitestosterone exceeds a certain threshold. The numbers behind the ratio are unknown, so we can’t draw a conclusion about if the levels were “excessive” or not. But if you want a detailed discussion of that topic, see the very first post on this site.)

Somewhere along the way, the athlete denies that he did anything wrong. And maybe that’s the truth. Eventually we get to the rumors and innuendo, which is where the story stands today. When I saw this article posted by a friend on Facebook, my interest was piqued. Jamie Shoemaker writes:

What a nightmare Ryan Braun’s life has become. It’s unbelievable what has happened recently to him and baseball. What do we make of it? Why isn’t his camp saying anything? And the latest rumor swirling is Braun failed the test due to medication his doctor prescribed for Herpes.

If that’s the first time you’ve heard the news, take a deep breath. Try not to laugh. It’s serious business.

Shoemaker goes on to give a brief history of Braun’s fledgling doping scandal. And he digs up an interesting thing that Braun said about Alex Rodriguez:

“The best thing he can do is come out, admit to everything and be completely honest,” Braun said. “The situation will die a lot faster if he tells the whole truth.”

O, the irony.

So here’s the thing about this whole “herpes story.” Herpes genitalia is treated with anti-viral drugs. In doing a bit of research while we were discussing the story, my wife ran across a page that suggests there is a school of thought that high doses of testosterone can keep the virus at bay. This, however, is not the usual treatment.

What I don’t know is whether major league baseball uses the “therapeutic use exemption” concept so familiar to sports operating under the WADA code. But if they are, and if this his how Braun is being treated by his doctor, then testing positive for a drug that a player was known to be using would rate five “duhs” on the obvious-ometer.

While Shoemaker’s article suggests herpes as the medical issue, TMZ merely states this:

Ryan Braun‘s positive test for banned substances was caused by medication he’s taking for a private medical issue — NOT performance enhancing drugs … this according to sources directly connected with Major League Baseball. [formatting from the original]

This gets more interesting. “Private medical issue,” eh? Well, to go into full-scale speculation mode, that could also be low testosterone, which would be extremely embarrassing for an athlete in the prime of his career. And what’s that treated with? Testosterone patches. But again, if this were the case, Braun, the Brewers and MLB would all know about this and it wouldn’t be a big deal (except to those who want to gin up a scandal and sell a few papers/magazines/ads, perhaps). Finding something you know is there isn’t exactly earth-shattering news.

Sounds to me, though, like he should claim that he was either the “victim” of a contaminated supplement, or he was out on a wicked bender the night before he tested positive. Those are two actual explanations that could account for testing positive for exogenous testosterone (the result of the CIR test, apparently). And Braun could attack the science behind the test, though fat lot of good that’s done other athletes in the past (paging Floyd Landis).

But if I may be as bold as to offer Ryan Braun some advice, let me paraphrase Pat McQuaid, head of the International Cycling Union, and the advice he gave to Floyd Landis more than five years ago. “Shut up. Save your money. Accept the suspension.” And, to add a bit more: Be glad it’s only for 50 games, or about one-third of a season. If professional baseball were under the World Anti-Doping Code, Braun would be going on vacation for two years.

Thirty Days in the Hole

Looks like Barry Bonds got off fairly easy. Thirty days of home confinement, 250 hours of community service (just over 6 weeks of a normal schlub’s work schedule), and two years probation. Of course, even the people at the heart of the BALCO scandal didn’t wind up doing much in the way of jail time — with the exception of Bond’s pal Greg Anderson, and the lawyer who leaked grand jury info to the press. Anderson spent time occupying a cell because he wouldn’t rat out his pal Bonds, and the lawyer got significant jail time for passing info to the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who were all over the BALCO story like white on rice.

Victor Conte spent less time in jail than Anderson or that lawyer. And he was at the epicenter of the whole thing, dealing drugs and giving advice to all manner of athletes on how to beat the tests. So  somehow Bonds’ sentence seems about par for the course.

I feel no pity for Bonds or the sentence Judge Susan Ilston handed down to him. But I have to wonder how much of a deterrent these high-profile prosecutions have been. Seems like a whole lot of time and money spent for fairly unimpressive results. And over here in Milwaukee, there’s a player caught up in the tangle of testing positive for one of the oldest PEDs in the modern PED playbook. Doping in sports. The story doesn’t change. Only the characters do.

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Here We Go Again

by Rant November 21, 2011

Here we go again. Today was the first day that the Court of Arbitration for Sport actually heard the Alberto Contador case. And, faithful readers of this blog will already know that Contador’s case will be heard over the next three days. Then, the waiting for a judgement begins. Will Contador be cleared of any [...]

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And Now, A Little “Suspense”

by Rant October 26, 2011

With Halloween just days away, stories of suspense and strange days are in the air. And these are definitely strange days in the world of sports and doping. Perhaps the strangest of days have to do with a legal case in France. It’s a story of hackers writ large. A story about Arnie Baker, Floyd [...]

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The Cleanest Ever

by Rant September 12, 2011

Earlier today, I saw a news article on BBC.com which touches on the subject of doping at the 2012 London Olympics. Of course, with that being about a year away, it’s hard to say how many athletes who get a boost from performance-enhancing drugs will actually get caught during the upcoming Summer Games. And, as [...]

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All Quiet on the Doping Front?

by Rant August 16, 2011

Well, not quiet, exactly, but subdued. Now that the Tour is over and the silly (a/k/a transfer) season is underway, let’s see what we’ve got. (Props to readers MikeG, Jeff , Larry and William Schart for providing links to the articles cited in this post.) Contador hearing postponed Color me not surprised that CAS case [...]

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