Today’s Floyd Landis hearings began with the cross examination of Cynthia Mongongu, one of the analytical chemists who performed the tests on Landis’ urine samples from Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France.
But before we get into a discussion of Cynthia Mongongu’s cross examination, there’s a related story making the rounds. As you may be aware, LNDD is under fire from a number of fronts, one of which is Team Landis. They’re fighting for their reputation, and perhaps more. If they’re shown up in this case to be a lab plagued with problems, poor information security, and a lack of attention to protocols and detail, they will face the possible loss of their WADA certification.
I don’t think that’s likely, because Dick Pound and company have stood firmly behind the lab up to now, and Pound is on the record as backing the lab in the Landis case. But the problems have been noted elsewhere, and at least one major sporting event is choosing to go elsewhere for doping tests. Supertennis is reporting that the French Open Tennis Tournament is voting with their francs and their feet by taking their business elsewhere.
Today’s brief story notes that the prestigious tournament, along with the other major tournaments, will be sending all of their lab work to the WADA-accredited lab in Montreal. Imagine, instead of sending the tests to a facility nearby, the French Open will have to ship their tests overseas to the Canadian lab. The logistics of this are intriguing, to say the least. I’d imagine they’ll have to ensure that the specimens are properly stored and transported so that they aren’t compromised before the lab begins their work.
That’s a significant loss of business, and a huge slap in the face for LNDD. The French Open says that with the lower cost of the Canadian lab, they’ll be able to conduct more tests. Ah, well, nothing lasts forever.
With this as a background, it’s easy to imagine the Dr. de Ceaurizz has taken his employees aside and coached them a bit on how to respond to questions at the Landis hearing. I’m sure that he wants to be sure that the lab’s reputation isn’t sullied by any shocking revelations, especially given the public nature of the proceedings in Malibu.
I spent part of the last few hours watching/listening to the hearings, with a break for a lunch-time bike ride (wasn’t as warm out as it looked, brrrr!), and some time spent on my day job. But one can still listen while doing other things.
Today’s testimony by Cynthia Mongongu has been extremely frustrating to listen to. Where yesterday she was very straight-forward and had no problems remembering details of events when asked, today she is having trouble remembering a number of things. Yesterday, she said the first she was aware of being involved in the Landis case was last weekend. Today, she admitted to filing a complaint about Landis’ observers during the April tests for interfering with her work.
When Howard Jacobs pressed her for details of how they interfered, she wasn’t able to define things clearly. And when he asked her about Dr. Brenna’s comments regarding looking over her shoulder, and why that wasn’t worth filing a complaint over, she again couldn’t quite say. Although she would allow that it made her uncomfortable.
Jacobs tried to get information out of Mongongu on how often the manufacturer had to come out and repair the IRMS machine. Mongongu couldn’t remember. He asked about how she was trained on the equipment. She was vague. Time seemed to drag on.
At the end of Jacobs’ questions, he asked about the leak of the recent test results to L’Equipe. Mongongu claims no friendship with the reporter, and no idea how the information wound up in the paper. Someone with knowledge of the test results and whose results were whose clearly leaked information, Jacobs seems intent on finding out who leaked the info. Depending on what witnesses USADA calls, he may get a chance to ask a number of LNDD staff the same questions.
Maurice Suh took over the questioning at a certain point. He, too, had a hard time getting answers out of the LNDD technician. Suh tried to follow up on specific things she’d testified to yesterday, but where she seemed to have a precise memory yesterday, things appeared a bit fuzzy and imprecise today. Jet lag, perhaps?
Suh asked her about the log files and why it appeared she was using the same file name for seemingly different runs. Interestingly, in between some of the “same” runs was a different test run. And yet, that would have been out of sequence to the steps Mongongu herself eventually described as the way a test would run.
TBV has the cross examination listed in two parts (here and here) if you want to read the full detail. I found listening to it somewhat akin to listening to someone drag their fingernails across a chalkboard. I suspect that Mongongu has been told to clam up when Team Landis is questioning her, and she’s doing that quite well. It’s taking up time, and her cross examination is not yet complete. Very likely, her testimony will finish sometime today, but there will only be enough time to start with her co-worker, Claire Frelat. Dr. Ayotte’s testimony is unlikely to happen before tomorrow.
Given the time limits on both sides, it will be interesting to see if the panel allows sessions over the weekend, or whether they will stick to their original schedule. At this pace, I have my doubts as to whether USADA will be able to finish their whole presentation and Team Landis will get their full turn before time is called. Clearly, USADA is going to have to make some adjustments. They only have about 16.5 hours of time for presenting witnesses, asking rebuttal questions, and cross-examining Landis’ witnesses. The problem is, by dragging their feet on the cross examination, these witnesses are burning up Team Landis’ time, too.
The clock is ticking …
Hi Rant: Agree about the Mongongu testimony — very painful. But, there were a few points that I thought were clearly established: (1) Mongongu says all the analysis steps are normally run back to back, but, in the Landis sample there are several time gaps — up to 5 hours — that exist and cannot be explained. Is this signifcant to you? (2) Mongongu says the IRMS broke down often — but she can’t remember if it was (“actually, it is a hard question” — chaa, rrrriiiight). Is this enough to question the reliability of the machine and do you think there will be an opportunity for team Landis to review the maintenance logs? and (3) Mongongu says she changed the IRMS liner the day of the Landis tests, amid all the other things she doesn’t remember, she DOES remember that she did this at 12:17. A commentor at TBV said this should be noted in the LNDD maintenance logs. If it is not (which I am betting it isn’t), wouldn’t this invalidate the test results? Sorry for all the quesitons.
Rant,
Please feel free to pick this line up and incorporate it in your post(s). It will get more attention there.
Folks following this are sure to include people involved in other organized sports – either themselves or their kids. Those organized sports often are within the USOC umbrella and their elite participants are subject to what is happening in the Landis case.
Whether or not folks believe in Landis, it seems abundantly clear that there are major problems with WADA and its system, from the science on up. I encourage folks to contact the national level of their sports organizations – like USA Swimming – to register their unhappiness with the system as presently set up and to request change. The groups are represented in the USOC and international umbrella organizations. If they become aware of how easily their athletes can be compromised and railroaded, or at least subjected to an unfair process, AND that their membership at the grass roots level is unhappy, then there is a (small) chance that they will become a force for change.
pcrosby
I agree that following this testimony is mind numbing so I try to read what others digest out of the hearings and then think about what was behind the issue. So for example, here is a quote from Velonews:
”’Third, Landis’s team attacked USADA’s testing of B Samples from other stages of the Tour. Landis introduced evidence that the French laboratory reran each of these samples several times, but only saved one test result for each sample.”””
Now that is a very interesting thing to do. If I was doing an assay like that and I got three or four answers that looked the same I would save them all and file them away to support the best chart of the set for the publication/presentation. On the other hand if I did four identical assays and got four different assays, but only presented/saved/published the one I liked (and ignored the others) that is known as unethical conduct and if found out I could lose my job and funding to do my work.
Seems the French have quasi ethics to say the least.
But at least the tennis people have their heads screwed on straight.
Steve,
I’ll answer those in a bit.
[Edit: New content added here]
As for Mlle. Mongongu’s shaky memory, I find it hard to believe that she has a sharp memory of something in the midst of so much fuzziness. That argument seems disingenuous, to say the least. Regarding the maintenance logs, I’m not sure if this would invalidate the results, but the idea that files are overwritten and we don’t know what was in them previously sure ought to. For all we know, they threw out full sets of results because the data wasn’t convenient to their needs.
[End Edit]
PCrosby,
I took your idea and am running with it at the end of my next rant.
JBSMP,
Good observations. Thanks for pointing that out.
– Rant