Wednesday Warmup

Well, here we are again, warming up for the last day of the Floyd Landis hearings. Yesterday was another good day for Team Landis, with a great deal of detailed testimony by Dr. Simon Davis pointing out a number of problems in how LNDD staff operated their IRMS instrument, and problems in how they analyzed the data acquired with the instrument.

Floyd Landis started the day, undergoing cross examination by Matthew Barnett. My impression of the summaries I read at TBV (here, here and here), and other news accounts, is that while many questions were asked, very few of them had any relevance to whether or not Landis’ test results show a true positive reading or not. Barnett didn’t even do any direct followup on Landis’ statements from Saturday that he hadn’t doped.

After I finished my write-ups yesterday, TBV posted a thorough and excellent analysis of Dr. Davis’ testimony, which may get into a fair amount of detail while keeping the results understandable for the layperson. To fully understand what Davis said on the stand yesterday, TBV’s post is a must-read. I’m not even going to try to pull out especially relevant parts, because the entire thing is relevant. Take 5 or 10 minutes to read it. What TBV’s summary sheds a lot of light on how things were done at LNDD. There are still pieces of the puzzle to put into place, and that is what we can expect from Dr. Davis’ testimony this morning.

Among the items that Davis’ testimony will provide today (absent any maneuvering or trickery from the USADA side) will be a software demonstration using the software installed at LNDD for the older Isoprime unit that they used to perform all of the analysis on Landis’ samples. Davis spoke yesterday about how the software could save information to make reanalysis of data quick, easy and capable of matching a prior analysis. This was news to LNDD staff when he mentioned it, which illustrates how familiar they were with the instrument’s software.

Davis will likely fill in a number of other areas in his testimony, too. The big question will be whether or not the cross examination by USADA will leave enough time for closing arguments, or for their rebuttal witness. Based on a comment made by one of USADA’s attorneys yesterday, it appears that one rebuttal witness could be Dr. J. Thomas Brenna, who testified on USADA’s behalf last week. One person who won’t be a witness, unless it’s via conference call, will be Dr. Jacques de Ceuarriz, the head of LNDD. It strikes me as odd that he didn’t stay around to take the stand in defense of his own staff. Dr. de Ceuarriz has already returned to Paris.

Today’s the day to wrap up as many loose ends as possible for both sides. There’s a train pulling into the station. The question is: Is it a circus train easing to a stop, or a freight-train out of control and about to jump off the tracks of justice?

We won’t know the arbitrators’ decision for several weeks. Longer, if closing arguments don’t occur, because then we’ll have to wait for that to be scheduled. Most, if not all, of the public portion of the Landis case will come to a close today. After that, this round will be done, except for guessing how the arbitrators will rule.

But remember: There’s at least one more round to the Landis saga, and that’s the small matter of AFLD’s almost parallel case in France. Remember that? They put it on hold in order to give USADA time to finish their case. What will AFLD do? Will they accept the outcome here? Or will they hold their own hearing?

And, of course, there’s a possible appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Pat McQuaid has already spoken out that he wants tough punishment for both Landis and Ivan Basso, and that he’ll appeal any result that he doesn’t like. Or Dick Pound, in one of his last acts as WADA’s czar, might file an appeal. But that’s all in the future.

Today, round one comes to an end. Or will it? Stay tuned. We’ll find out somewhere around 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

Snark of the century: Selena Roberts’ opinion piece in today’s New York Times is a potential nominee for the “Snark of the Century” award. If her writing were the sole reason I get home delivery of the Times (it’s not, I rarely read her pieces), my subscription would be canceled at this point. Her article about Floyd Landis is some of the most vile, viscious invective I’ve seen heaped on by a mainstream journalist. I have no problem with her being of the opinion that Landis is guilty. She’s entitled to that. But the way she’s penned her ill-informed piece, it was clearly written with a poison pen. There’s a word for her, and as Barbara Bush said back in 1988, it rhymes with witch.