Landis Hearing Date Set

The guessing game about when Floyd Landis’ arbitration hearing will be held, where the embattled Tour de France champion will challenge his alleged positive doping test has now been answered. In a conference call this morning, Landis spokesman Michael Henson announced that the hearing will be held May 14, 2007.

The conference call was originally set up so that Dr. Arnie Baker could present his slide show, which discusses the actual lab findings in the Landis case and problems with that data, to members of the media. Once Baker’s presentation was done, however, questioning turned almost immediately to news being reported by CBS and the Associated Press that the AFLD hearing in Paris will pass judgment on the case.

Maurice Suh, who was retained by the Landis defense team in December, is on his way to Paris to represent Landis at the AFLD (the French anti-doping agency) hearings. In response to questions about what the Landis team expects to come out of the hearings, Henson stated that they expect the hearings to open tomorrow, but do not expect a ruling to be made at that time.

“We don’t know what or if any ruling will be made … Our hopes are that they will stay the proceedings until after the USADA hearing and follow the standard jurisdictional line,” Henson, the executive director of the Floyd Fairness Fund, said.

“The AFLD and Mr. Bourdry have been nothing but open and fair, and we hope they will stay the hearings and follow standard jurisdictional lines,” added Brian Rafferty, who is the Floyd Fairness Fund chairman.

According to the Associated Press, Phillippe Bordry, president of the AFLD, stated that Landis can expect a fair hearing on Thursday. “It’s not because someone is positive that he must be automatically suspended, the rights of the defense are very important,” Bordry told the AP.

Baker’s presentation went over much of the same territory as his original slide show released in October. As he went through the slides, he took the time to carefully explain the numbers and data behind his comments. His comments covered the following points (familiar to those who have already seen the slide show):

• The mislabeling of Landis’ sample makes it unclear whose urine was tested
• By WADA’s own standards, the B sample showed evidence of contamination and should not have been tested further
• The testing was unreliable, due to wide variances in data. Baker stated that WADA standards for long-term studies for testosterone doping suggest that a variance of 30 percent in a rider’s test results is evidence of doping. Applying that same standard to tests of the same sample, Baker argues that the results for Floyd’s A Sample tests were unreliable, because T/E ratios in the various sub-samples ranged from 4.9:1 to 11.4:1.
• The test is not a true positive, because not all metabolites measured were positive. How many metabolites must be positive for the test to be positive is expected to be a bone of contention during the arbitration hearings.

When questioned about Dr. Christiane Ayotte’s comments last fall (Ayotte is the head of the Canadian anti-doping agency) that only a single metabolite had to show an elevated reading for a positive test, Baker defended the position that all metabolites must be elevated. In doing so, he cited the standards at both the Australian anti-doping lab and the UCLA anti-doping lab, both which require all metabolites to be elevated to declare a positive result.

Baker went on to explain that Landis’ testosterone level was actually in the low to normal range, even though his testosterone-to-epitestosterone (T/E) ratio in some of the test results was high. The high ratio was the result of a much lower than normal epitestosterone level, rather than a high testosterone level. Unlike how Dick Pound characterized Landis’ test results in a recent interview with the New York Times, Baker showed that Floyd Landis was “not up to his eyeballs in testosterone” during Stage 17 of last year’s Tour de France.

Baker summed up the data from LNDD, France’s anti-doping laboratory, this way: “This whole thing is so full of errors I don’t know what to think except I can’t call it a positive test.”

Over the coming months, the arbitration process moves into the discovery phase, with each side seeking the documentation and material needed to present their cases. Travis Tygart, general counsel for USADA recently told the Daily Peloton that the USADA side is ready to go to trial. The Landis side, however, has not yet received all the documentation they need to present their defense. Since the scandal erupted, Landis has spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 in order to gain access to these documents.

Both Rafferty and Henson made the point that these documents would be provided as part of a standard trial within the judicial system, and that the expense in order to obtain them has been far beyond what would be the case for an ordinary trial.

Rafferty described the process up to now as “labyrinthine and horrifying” and “difficult to understand.”

“We would like to get the information that’s the right of anyone who’s accused of something like this,” Rafferty said, going on to say, “We have the right to that, and we don’t think they want to give it to us – maybe because they know what it will show.”

The location of the hearing has yet to be determined, according to Henson, but he expects to make an announcement in the near future once the details are ironed out.

The arbitration panel in the United States is not likely to announce its decision before late spring or early summer. Regardless of the ruling, it is expected that the losing side will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). A final decision from the CAS may not be announced until late 2007 or early 2008. In the meantime, the FFF will continue to raise money to assist with Landis’ defense.