Passport, Please? Redux

While reading the newspaper this morning at breakfast, I happened upon an article by Juliet Macur that appears above the fold on the front page of today’s New York Times (online version here). “Cycling Ready to Use Blood Profiles in Doping Case,” reads the headline. “Whoa! This must be important,” I thought. The Times doesn’t just put a story like that on the front page unless there’s something to it, do they?

A new front in the fight against doping has formed, with the embattled and bruised sport of cycling taking the lead.

One or more professional cyclists will soon face a doping case based not on a failed drug test or a criminal investigation, but rather on telltale changes in the blood that signal the use of performance enhancers, the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union, said.

Pat McQuaid, the group’s president, said it was in the final stages of gathering scientific data and legal paperwork to bring a doping case against at least one rider whose blood profile had shown evidence of doping.

He said it would be the first case born purely from evidence that an athlete’s blood profile, called a biological passport, had changed in comparison with a baseline drawn from earlier tests.

But then, I thought, hasn’t he said something like this before? How exactly is this news, unless we find out who the cyclist happens to be? Once the case is actually announced, then it’s news. Before then? Not so much.

But back to that memory of hearing McQuaid say this all before. I did a bit of digging and found the previous time that the UCI’s head honcho crowed about having some rogue cyclists in the cross-hairs of the new biological passport. It was last May, when McQuaid said that out of suspicious results for 23 riders, five would be facing further investigation in the near future. One of those cyclists was said to be a roadie, while the others came from other cycling disciplines.

And then, we heard nothing. Still haven’t, unless today’s revelation is related to McQuaid’s previous comments. How will we know if that’s the case? Hard to say. Macur’s story fails to mention that this wasn’t the first time McQuaid claimed the UCI was on the verge of a doping prosecution based on their new biological passports.  His latest remarks came during the Tour of California, as Macur reports:

“It’s a completely new form of fighting against doping,” Mr. McQuaid said last week at a news conference held during the Tour of California. “I do believe that the whole biological passport program is going to be the future of antidoping or one aspect in the arsenal of the future of antidoping.”

Mr. McQuaid would not say how many cases were being prepared or how many athletes were involved, adding that it may be one or three or six riders. He said the doping actions would begin in “the coming days and weeks.”

Moving forward with such an aggressive antidoping plan, he said, would show cycling’s effort to right itself after years of doping scandals involving many of the sport’s top riders. Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner, was stripped of his Tour title for using synthetic testosterone and served a two-year ban.

Seems to me that everything the sport of cycling has been doing in the struggle to rein in doping could be characterized as an effort to “right itself.” The biological passport is just one of the latest of those efforts, as are the individual team programs along the same kind of lines. Let’s stop for a bit and check something else out. Take a brief moment to read that last sentence in the quote again. There’s something odd about it’s being there. Nothing that’s been written about the biological passports has suggested that the program would or could be able to detect the use of synthetic testosterone. Perhaps it can, but we don’t quite know that yet. Now, take a moment to read the next sentence in the story, below.

Any riders whose blood profiles trigger a doping case will also face a two-year suspension if it is their first doping offense.

Or, to put it together, it flows like this:

Moving forward with such an aggressive antidoping plan, he said, would show cycling’s effort to right itself after years of doping scandals involving many of the sport’s top riders. Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner, was stripped of his Tour title for using synthetic testosterone and served a two-year ban.

Any riders whose blood profiles trigger a doping case will also face a two-year suspension if it is their first doping offense.

Macur isn’t is someone who, until recently, has covered cycling only when doping was all or part of the subject. She may be covering the sport on a more regular basis, judging by the fact that she wrote a few stories about this year’s Tour of California. The transition from one paragraph to the next leaves me wondering if, perhaps, she listed other riders who’ve been the subject of doping investigations over the previous few years. Basso, Riccò, Schumacher, Piepoli, just to name a few. All of whom either have been accused or admitted to using one form or another of blood doping, whether by EPO or their own blood. Although in Basso’s case,  he was only “thinking about it” enough to go ahead a store a few pints at the Eufemiano Fuentes Blood Bank and Trust in Spain.

But even if Macur did mention other cyclists, then a copyeditor must have removed those references. Whoever was responsible, it was a cheap shot. Yes, factually what Macur’s story reports is true about Landis, at least in terms of pointing out that he was suspended for using synthetic testosterone (although the evidence of that was far from convincing to many observers, including me). But given that there have been so many other cases since Landis’ began, it’s a pretty cynical thing to single him out.

Especially when there are others who have (eventually) admitted to having their hands in the doping cookie jar, as Basso, Riccò and Piepoli all did. But for a front page story, perhaps the average reader wouldn’t know the other riders’ names? Perhaps somone decided, “Hey, let’s just focus on the one name they do know?” As I said. Cheap shot. Especially as it has no real bearing on the rest of the story. As an exercise, go back and read the previous quote again, this time skipping over the Landis reference. It doesn’t change the meaning or flow of the story to leave it out, does it? Certainly not  to my eyes.

The story goes on…

“It [the biological passport] will bring back the credibility of cycling, which is badly needed,” Mr. McQuaid said.

One can only hope that at some point, the credibility of cycling will be restored. And perhaps the biological passport program will be partly responsible if that occurs. But this is a new era in the doping wars, and it’s a very different approach. Instead of looking for direct evidence, the biological passport focuses on eight markers in the blood as a way of determining if someone has been up to no good in their preparations for, or participation in, competition. In other words, it’s focus is on catching cheats via indirect evidence.

So far, the UCI has collected more than 8,000 samples from more than 800 athletes (according to some reports last May, there are more than 850 cyclists who’ve been tapped for blood samples.) This works out to somewhere around 10 samples per cyclist. Some from in competition and some from out of competition. The goal, in analyzing these markers, is to be 99.9 percent certain that the changes noted in future tests are due to prohibited substances or training techniques.

“The beauty with the blood passport is that you don’t need to know each and every drug that is out there because you see the indication that something is being used,” said [Robin] Parisotto, who was the principal researcher in the creation of the first test for EPO used at the Olympic Games.

“With some cases, you can win hands down,” he said. “The athlete will have a difficult time explaining the spikes and troughs of patterns in their blood. They won’t be able to say they used the wrong toothpaste, or that they got something from their dog. But the U.C.I. has to tread very carefully because this is such a new paradigm.”

He’s right about that. The UCI (and by extension WADA) needs to tread very carefully. The trickiest thing about this new system is that no two humans are exactly the same when it comes to reacting to various drugs, as well as various types of training. That’s why the biological passport is created for each individual, rather than using a specific set of fixed values that apply across the board. So on the one hand it’s a customized tool, unique to each individual. But to truly be of value, one has to have enough data from enough situations that accurate conclusions can be drawn. I have a hard time believing that the three to six data points Macur quotes in her article are truly enough to do that.

Here’s why. Back in the autumn of 2007, I interviewed Paul Strauss, who then headed up the Agency for Cycling Ethics (ACE). At the time, ACE was doing the team testing for the cycling squad now known as Garmin-Chipotle. During the course of their testing, he told me, one of the riders had some suspicious test results. After looking into the matter, it turned out that the rider had an unusual physiological response to training at altitude. But it took a certain amount of investigation and additional testing to determine that fact. In the new system, however, I wonder if that rider would be subject to prosecution for an alleged doping offense. Especially if the UCI had only a few tests worth of data to go on.

In order to prevent such an occurrence from happening, that rider’s profile would need enough test results from training and racing — not only at sea level, but at altitude, too. And what of athletes who become ill? Would the markers used for the biological passport be affected by certain illnesses? It seems to me that many variables need to be accounted for before one starts getting into the realm of that hoped for 99.9 percent certainty.

I’m not saying the theory is wrong. It seems very logical, actually. I’m just suggesting that the amount of data needed to reach the correct conclusion may be more than the UCI has currently collected for each individual. Quite a bit is at stake, as Rob Parisotto told Macur:

“There’s a lot riding on this, more than just the credibility of the U.C.I. The philosophy of the passport and the future of the program will be on the line in the near future. They really must win their first case.”

I can understand that there’s a desire to win that first case (the thought being that a loss would damage the program’s credibility). But shouldn’t the focus be on getting the program right, too? And by getting it right, I mean not only the scientific theory, but also the execution.

As of now, WADA does not have a finalized operating manual for biological passports. This seems problematic to me. While WADA’s Director General David Howman says that one will soon be completed, and that the UCI has followed the appropriate steps, how do we really know that’s the case?

“Everyone is scared of that first case because they don’t want it to bomb on them,” Mr. Howman said. “We are very anxious to ensure that this is a successful project because the sooner we have a successful case, the better it will be for future cases. This will be a significant step forward in protecting clean athletes.”

Even Travis Tygart, who heads USADA, is getting in on the nervousness. He told Macur that he expects this impending case to boil down to whether or not the science and the data are convincing enough to rule out anything other than doping.

“The question becomes, ‘How accurate and how persuasive is the data?’ ” Mr. Tygart said.

I find it a bit odd that there’s so much worry over something like that. WADA’s rules on antidoping tests deem the science to be correct. So no athlete can win by arguing against the science applied in his or her case. The only thing that they can do is argue that the data wasn’t interpreted correctly.

But again, I don’t get the references to court. Anti-doping cases are decided by arbitration panels not civil or criminal courts, and the rules for those panels come straight from WADA and the various sports federations. In other words, to begin with the deck is firmly stacked against the hapless soul who gets stuck in the claws of the anti-doping system.

The only scenario that I can see where the worries are justified is in the case that the arbitration panel or panels who hear that first case will hold the ADAs to the same standard that’s been applied to the so-called “non-analytical positives.” In those cases, the usual standard is similar to criminal cases, that of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” rather than the “comfortable satisfaction” rule in cases involving actual lab work. In that scenario, I can see the potential for the ADAs falling flat on their faces, otherwise, the end result of the first case to be brought is already a foregone conclusion. Whether or not the evidence truly shows doping (and it could), the person will be found guilty.

The theory behind the biological passport may well be correct. But there’s a danger in creating a system that relies on indirect evidence to prove guilt. In developing such a system, much care needs to be given to doing the research and testing necessary to rule out explanations other than doping. Much is not known about the details of the program and the details of the operators manual currently being drafted by WADA. Over time, we will no doubt learn more. Back to the question that arises from McQuaid’s statements at the ToC, is there really a case based on biological passport testing on the horizon?

Hard to say. It’s not the first time Pat McQuaid has claimed that to be the case. It may not be the last. Only time will tell if that’s the case, and only then will we learn who the first person to be prosecuted will be.

Meanwhile, Macur’s story leaves me wondering whether Pat McQuaid is just blowing smoke, or whether he just can’t help but comment on things right before they blow up in the media (“worst-case scenario,” anyone?). If I were a betting man, I’d be placing my money on smoke.