CyclingNews.com reports that Thomas Dekker is going to fight to clear his name. In comments attributed to an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Dekker said:
“This should not be the end of my cycling career,” he said.
“This is a very strange story,” Dekker told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. When he returned after a final training ride before traveling to the Tour, he received a phone call from Anne Gripper, the UCI’s anti-doping manager. “She told me that I had tested positive for EPO in December 2007. I listened to the whole story. Then I just about hit the ground.”
The 24-year-old said that he finds it “all very strange. I do not know exactly what is going on.” Dekker also questioned the timing of the matter. “This story pops up on the very day that I leave for the Tour.
“How can a sample be negative in 2007 and now suddenly gets tested again? That is wrong.”
Then again, WADA tells a slightly different story, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur story at Monsters and Critics.com.
However, the World Anti-Doping Agency ordered the retest due to suspicious blood levels over the past month.
‘We have been watching Dekker for quite a while and conducted retests with new methods of his frozen samples in Cologne,’ said Enrico Carpani, spokesman of the ruling cycling body UCI.
According to CyclingNews.com, Dekker released a statement in which he claims to have a letter from Dr. Mario Zorzoli of the UCI which states:
“This is to confirm that all test results of 2008 that are known to the UCI show that the blood values of Thomas Dekker…did not exceed any limits which would have required the imposition of a declaration of incapability under UCI’s current regulations.”
Dekker contacted Zorzoli after rumors of irregularities in his blood tests surfaced in 2008. Zorzoli’s letter refers to tests conducted for the biological passport in 2008. Whether Dekker’s test results from an out-of-competition test conducted shortly before Christmas in 2007 may be another matter. Dekker, however, claims that Zorzoli’s letter proves that there were no problems with his blood values.
Dekker also takes issue with the retesting of urine samples. The retesting appears to have suggested that Dekker used Dynepo, a second-generation blood boosting drug based on EPO. “It is now apparent to all that new standards are being applied to older, previously tested samples found to be negative,” the cyclist said.
The crux of the UCI’s allegations seems to stem from retesting of Dekker’s December 2007 urine sample. While the UCI is within their rights to retest a sample that is less than eight years old, and while Dekker’s biological passport data may have led to the retesting, one question remains: How did the lab conducting the original test results originally determine that the sample was negative for EPO and it’s related drugs, and how did they then come to a different conclusion at this time?
It’s not as if Dynepo wasn’t detectable back in December 2007. It was. So the lab should have caught Dekker’s use on the first go `round (assuming that Dekker was actually using the drug). Is this, as Dekker claims, a case where standards were lowered in order to “catch” more cheats? And if so, what is the scientific basis for lowering those standards.
Whatever the answers to those questions, I hope Dekker has a lot of money to spend. As we saw in a previous case, the anti-doping authorities are not hesitant to spend whatever it takes (and do whatever it takes) to win a doping conviction. Before he actually fights the charges, he needs to carefully consider whether he can truly afford this fight.
Innocent or guilty, the deck is stacked against him. He may be better advised to just take the sanction, spend the next two years training hard, and come back when his suspension is over. In the meantime, he’ll have all that money he would have spent on lawyers.
On the flip side, if he follows that advice and he’s innocent, the system will go unchallenged. It’s a tough choice to make, and not one for those with a weak stomach. But he may not be the only one making such a choice. To steal a line from an old song …
How long can this keep going on?
Looks like the annual ritual of doping cases that emerge on the eve of the Tour de France is well on its way to achieving Puerto-like impact on the 2009 edition of cycling’s most storied race. That is, this report is to be believed.
L’Equipe is reporting (at least, that’s what a number of other news agencies are saying, but good luck finding the article on the L’Equipe web site) that there could be between four and seven doping cases to emerge between now and the time the Tour begins in Monaco a couple of days hence. The cases, which are not based on the UCI’s biological passport program, apparently stem from samples collected during the Tour of Romandie and the Tour de Suisse.
So far, the names of riders affected by the rumored test results have not been identified in print. So it’s unclear if the alleged miscreants are big names within the sport, or domestiques working for the big names. Either way, if the report is true, a number of teams may be reshuffled within the next couple of days.
Maybe Dekker was tested negative in the first testing but the test may have been improved or the criteria lowered since they can use it more efficiently with datas of biopassport.
L’Equipe seems to have just printed the rumour about new cases in the printed newspaper. Tomorrow we could find it on the website.
More:
“As Martial Saugy of the Lausanne lab put it, the test results clearly show who’s doping and who isn’t (according to him, about 80% of the TDF peloton). Simply they can’t declare it positive due to insanely high standards to be able to declare a sample positive.
In this case, the spectral analysis showed bands that are nothing like those of normal urine. Clearly exogenous EPO was there. But they couldn’t prove it. However, with the new test for Dynepo, they retested it and it came back positive for Dynepo.”
http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/td2009eop_en.pdf
Martial Saugy of the Lausanne lab apparently has a very low threshold for objecting to false positives?
Thanks for the link, but I’d be much more impressed if WADA had the confidence to subject their methods and fulfillment to outside scrutiny and higher standards. Until then it’s pretty much just words. My bias is based upon what I have seen as abuses by the system. WADA has its own biases, and they are related to a desire to control outcomes. That’s just wrong for an organization whos work is supposed to be based upon science.
That said, I don’t know if Dekker is guilty or not? It’s been estabished the athletes have no control/ownership of their samples once “donated”. It’s also been established their is an 8 year limit. While it may be maddening to Dekker that they decided to re-test samples that previously did not trip an AAF (any memory here?), they can and did. For their part, I hope the testing was scientifically bullet proof. Anyone/everyone deserves better than the poor excuse for a hand job they gave Floyd.
Rant, you’ve brought out the salient point in the anti-doping movement: follow the money. It is the *money* calculus that is far more difficult to understand than the “science.”
There is a common perception that lab testing and doping controls can expose a cheater. We have taken it for granted that science can detect drug use, and the results conclusive.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Money can buy the power to convince others. Not just in simple bribery, but in collecting evidence, hiring experts, preparing detailed presentations…and training dancing monkeys. You point out Dekker needs to decide if it is worth the cost in lawyers. We know already it is not – the system is so far stacked, so far removed from fairness and justice, that it is futile to play the game at this point. The powerful have constructed a system such that even an accusation of drug use will suffice to doom an athlete. Nevermind proving actual or detected use before a fair an impartial decision maker – that need not be done, as we have seen time and time again.
The money calculus is much more important. To an athlete, the decision has to be made prospectively. The drug use allegations can come at anytime. You might be called a witch, and suffer the punishment, so why not prepare for it ahead of time? One possibility is to hire your own doping contol system, but that was even too expensive for the world’s richest professional cyclist, Lance Armstrong. Why not take that money you would spend on lawyers, and spend it on an private anti-doping record system? Because, well, until you get good, no one is going to accuse you; and you can’t afford any of that until you get good, and then its too late.
What’s an easy solution? Dope to the gills. That’s cheap, and if pro athletes have something in spades, it’s egos. Without that, they’d never play such dangerous games (and fairly, none of us would watch them, either.) “I can be smarter, craftier, and if I don’t do it, I’ll never win anyway.” It’s like counting cards in Vegas. Get caught at it, and you’re shown the door. Don’t do it, and you’re sure to lose anyway. Counting is easy; hiding it is hard. Like the casinos, the UCI/WADA/USADA and other federations have nearly unlimited resources, as their wealth and power depends on their maintaining control.
It isn’t about competition – it’s about money.
I’ve watched Saugy on TSR several times the last two years, and my ‘gut reaction’ is that he’s calmer than anyone we ‘know’ from France. (IOW: had he been my professor, I could have retained an interest in Science…)
Dekker’s comments are interesting. Rant’s are also (or we wouldn’t be here 🙂
The AFP article in French states that implies that the UCI ‘evidence’ from the passport program, pushed it towards asking Cologne’s lab to ‘re-test’ that Dec2007 sample… but it isn’t stated whether Cologne had performed the original test?
… but I’m really curious what possible grounds WADA/UCI etc would have for giving him the ‘four years’ found through Article 10.6 AGGRAVATED CIRCUMSTANCES… (Which sub-article still doesn’t rate a Definition in the Code…), or under what other basis they’re saying his suspension could be double the two-year standard?
Again, ‘judicial interpretation’, the unregulated tax-via-legal-costs on defendants, allows a systemic need to define Athletes’ rights to know that a test is a control is a Positive (or Negative) and get on with their lives…
“Hi Mr xxxxx, you remember that DUI test we gave you (blood test) last year? Remember you were 0.03 so we let you go? Well, we’ve redefined the test, and you’re now a 0.06: let’s take you to jail…”
There’s obviously no ban against ‘double jeopardy’ written into the Code.
When we get an organization protecting the rights of Athletes (not because they’re ‘doping’; because they don’t know from today to tomorrow who’s agreed to what test and its standards are incestuously-derived (a strident variant of what Jeff wrote above…)), the rules will be (at last) adequate, transparent, and Quigley-compliant (referring to my favourite CAS case).
Guess I’ll read the TDC Jean provided (after my nap)
ZEN)
Oh, I didn’t give a source for my ‘four years’, which is in the last line of the article linked (actually the last five words)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jERPi_RYpN8zpyQjxdQ35xbOxjpQ
ZEN
Jean,
Thanks for the link. I have my doubts that Saugy’s estimate about the number of dopers is correct, but if he can prove it, I’ll be happy to look at what he has to show. Lowering the standards for what constitutes proof seems like it will lead to more problematic cases, where the actual result isn’t clear-cut. Maybe the accused is a cheat. Maybe he/she isn’t. Better to have higher standards and a few bad guys go free than to have lax standards and a few honest athletes get tarred and feathered for something they didn’t do. Eventually, the bad guys will slip up and get caught. On the other hand, once an honest person’s reputation and name is destroyed, there’s very little that could be done to undo the damage.
Eightzero,
Sorry that your comment got held in moderation. Not sure why it happened. You’re right, the system is so stacked against an accused athlete, that it really doesn’t make sense from a dollars and cents point of view, to fight. Better to save the money and use it for something other than legal fees. It’s a shame things are rigged that way. I have my doubts that it will change anytime in the near future, though.
ZENmud,
Thanks, I sure hope that what I write is interesting. 🙂 Sorry your main comment got held in moderation. Just like with eightzero’s, I’m not sure what happened there. Interesting point you bring up. Say someone gets popped for a doping offense circa 2007, when an initial positive would get him/her a two-year suspension. Do the rules from 2007 apply? Or, do the “new and improved” rules apply? I’m guessing that WADA and their minions would argue for the newer, harsher penalties. But I’m also guessing that there’s nothing specifically in the WADA code to address retrospective cases where the offense occurred before the penalties were changed.
With the whole “judicial interpretation” angle, what really constitutes aggravated circumstances? Someone who challenges a lab’s finding? Someone who bought drugs from some sort of doping ring or cartel? Or someone who actually works for or runs the doping ring? It’s a vague and nebulous term that could be applied to almost any offense, or so it seems. One thing that particularly disturbs me about the WADA code is the areas of the code that are left open to interpretation. Usually, the interpretation that favors WADA, et. al., seems to rule the day. Why not be honest about it and just tell everyone up front what those interpretations are? It could save everyone a whole lot of legal fees. Then again, it could also expose the seedier side of the “anti-doping justice system.”
I should have been more cautious when I wrote about lowering standard of EPO test.
My idea is that with the datas of biopassport, with many EPO test results, with the help of Ricco, Kohl,… ADA have learn more information about the doping process with EPO and how the body reacts, so some pictures of the famous bands can be better understand so lesser clear band can be interpreted more confidentialy as EPO doping.
So in fact, le whole test has a higher standard despite admitting less clear bands.
Probably today they can detect smaller dose than 2 years ago.
I do think that there is few errors in drug testing , probably largely less than Justice error.
If people want WADA rules like Justice rules so we should give to WAFA the possibility to raid house or rooms of athletes when there is doping suspicion and so…
Just do think what they could do with the 80% of riders suspected by Saugy.
Let me see if I am understanding what went on here. Based on more or less current blood values from the blood passport system, WADA decided to recheck 2007 sample(s) and came up with a now positive result from a sample that originally had been determined to be negative. What is the connect between current blood values and the 2007 tests?
I understand that WADA has the right to retest samples within the 8 year limit, and I can understand that improvements in testing methods can detect doping that once was undetectable. But why go back to 2007, surely there are more recent samples available, or alternatively, do some new testing?
Or is it that they are saying, in effect, that Dekker is clean now, but comparing current blood values with past results indicates that there was something fishy in 2007?
Lowering standards to catch more dopers (and in all likelihood, catching more false positives) is one thing, but it shouldn’t be retroactive. At one time, the BAC in some states was 0.10 or even, if I remember correctly, 0.12; but has now been lowered to 0.08. But they don’t go back and get someone who tested 0.09 and give him a ticket.
BTW, I see that the French are saying that Armstrong will be “particularly monitored” for doping during the TdF. In the same article, they also say he will be treated like anyone else. So which is it. AP article here:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CYC_TOUR_DE_FRANCE_ARMSTRONG?SITE=ORROS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT