What Kind Of Game Is This, Anyway?

Watching the back and forth about delays in the Landis case has me thinking about whether this whole enterprise could be best compared to a chess game, a poker game, or whether it contains elements of both.

To a great extent, what’s playing out at the moment — at least in public — is battle for sport fans’ hearts and minds. Team Landis is in a come-from-behind situation here, as the whole ruckus started out as a huge PR downer for them. Going from the high of winning the Tour in storybook fashion, to the low of being an accused drug cheat in less than a week’s time probably sets a dubious record for an athletic hero’s fall from grace.

What’s playing out now is a deadly-serious game, whatever kind of game it is. On the Landis side, it’s a fight to regain his good name and reputation, which have been severely tarnished by the doping allegations. It’s a fight to prove Floyd’s innocence. And it’s a fight for the right to continue competing as a professional cyclist. To lose means an end to Floyd Landis’ career as a professional cyclist. It is, as Lance Armstrong once observed, going to be difficult to prove a negative (i.e. Landis didn’t dope), especially with the full weight of the anti-doping machine being brought to bear.

On the USADA/WADA/AFLD side, it’s a struggle to maintain the credibility of the current anti-doping system and to prove that the anti-doping system works. A loss in such a high profile case will do some serious damage to a system that is already reeling from revelations about sloppy lab work, sloppy documentation, leaked information, differing standards between labs for what constitutes a positive result, possible failures to follow established testing protocols, and perhaps even a rush to judgment before the data was fully vetted and understood by the ADA authorities.

Regarding the current delay in setting a hearing date for the Landis case, Bonnie DeSimone in an article on ESPN.com reports:

USADA general counsel Travis Tygart said he is barred under confidentiality rules from discussing any specifics of the Landis case, but added, “We’re ready to proceed. We want hearings done as soon as possible.”

Further on, she reports:

Landis spokesman Michael Henson said the main reason the hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet is that lawyers are still trying to obtain documents they feel are critical to prepare the rider’s case — a process known as discovery.

Unfortunately, the rules governing discovery for anti-doping cases going to arbitration are significantly different, and more restrictive, than in U.S. criminal or civil courts. Howard Jacobs, Landis’ lawyer, requested additional scientific and technical documentation in correspondence with Travis Tygart, his counterpart at USADA, last fall. Tygart turned him down, arguing that Landis’ defense team had been given all the documentation required under the World Anti-Doping Code.

Still, Jacobs and other members of the Landis legal team are continuing their efforts to gain access to evidence they consider to be relevant to Landis’ defense.

“It’s a real uphill battle for them to get basic pieces of information they need to conduct a fair hearing,” Henson says.

In an e-mail interview with the Daily Peloton’s Ferren Christou, Tygart bemoans the delays caused by athletes’ lawyers requesting voluminous amounts of documentation, saying:

These fishing expeditions are typically designed to introduce confusion into the process and create a smoke and mirrors defense in an effort to influence the public and create false sympathy for the athlete.

In addition, he tells Christou that in the cases of Kelli White, Tim Montgomery and Alvin Harrison:

[W]e attempted to get these athletes to acknowledge their doping behavior and save the money that would be spent on prosecuting the case to be used in our research and education programs for clean athletes.

From what’s been appearing in the press, Tygart appears to be saying that the delays are the fault of the Landis team for seeking additional documentation. But, delays happen because people can’t or won’t do something. In this case, produce material requested by the defense. And perhaps there are other delays going on behind the scenes that we haven’t heard about, and may never hear about. Some of those delays may even come from the USADA side.

What’s playing out in public is the part of the story each side wants us to know. What’s playing out away from the public’s view may have just as much effect on the outcome of this case. In this regard, Team Landis appears to be taking the higher ground by shining a bright light on as much of the process as possible, as they’ve made a great deal of their defense public knowledge. In the court of public opinion, Travis Tygart is trying to play catch-up while not talking directly about this case.

If Tygart is really so well-prepared and confident that he’ll prevail, providing the documents that Landis’ defense team asks for will have no effect on the outcome. Then again, if he’s bluffing, perhaps he wants to convince his opponents the he has the stronger hand. Similar to poker players who bluff their way to winning, while not holding the best hand at the table.

Certainly, in this case Team Landis has to play with the cards they’ve been dealt. And while much has been written on the merits of their arguments, we won’t know how well their cards (and arguments) will hold up in the arbitration hearings. Although there are some bright spots in his defense, it would be hard to say that Landis is holding a royal flush.

Then again, perhaps this is all a chess game, where the moves — both public and private — are part of some grand strategy to win. And where the players are calculating their opponents’ moves at least a few steps ahead. Each move, on both sides, would ultimately be geared towards placing the opponent in checkmate. And each move would try to force the other side into making a fatal mistake. My hunch is that it’s a little of both.