Captain Ahab may just have landed his elusive white whale. Almost thirteen years after winning his first Tour de France, Lance Armstrong found out that he’s facing charges in an anti-doping case put together by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). The news, first reported by Amy Shipley of The Washington Post, comes less than three weeks before the start of the 2012 edition of the great circuit around France and its neighboring countries. As Shipley reports:
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency brought formal doping charges against former cyclist Lance Armstrong in an action that could cost him his seven Tour de France titles, according to a letter sent to Armstrong and several others Tuesday.
As a result of the charges, Armstrong has been immediately banned from competition in triathlons, a sport he took up after his retirement from cycling in 2011.
Armstrong has long been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs and techniques. The oft-rumored pursuit of Armstrong burst out into the open in 2010, as federal prosecutors began looking at Armstrong as a target of an investigation of doping allegations during his tenure on the US Postal Service/Discovery professional cycling teams. Armstrong’s hope of riding (and running and swimming) of into the sunset via a return to his triathlon roots has been dashed — for now.
Based on the Post’s article, and others from The New York Times and ESPN.com (hat tip to Larry for the ESPN link) and USAToday.com, it appears that USADA is building what amounts to a hybrid case. Part non-analytical positive, based on testimony from fellow riders and others, and part based on results of Armstrong’s biological passport test results when he returned to professional cycling in 2009, 2010 and the early part of 2011. From the WaPo article:
In the 15-page charging letter obtained by The Post, USADA made previously unpublicized allegations against Armstrong, alleging it collected blood samples from Armstrong in 2009 and 2010 that were “fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.” Armstrong has never tested positive.
…
The letter specifically alleges that “multiple riders with firsthand knowledge” will testify that Armstrong used EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone and masking agents, and that he distributed and administered drugs to other cyclists from 1998 to 2005. The letter alleges that numerous witnesses will testify that Armstrong also used human growth hormone before 1996.
Armstrong isn’t the only person USADA is pursuing in this case. The letter sent to Armstrong (update: link courtesy of Jean C) apparently mentions that Armstrong’s perpetual directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel; Pedro Celaya and Luis Garcia del Moral, doctors on the US Postal/Discovery team; Pepe Marti, a trainer; and the infamous Dr. Michele Ferrari are also charged with being part of an organized doping ring. Each faces a potential life ban, if the case goes forward and they’re found guilty by an arbitration panel. Given that at least two of the people mentioned aren’t US citizens, I have to wonder whether USADA has any jurisdiction over Bruyneel, et. al.
David Leon Moore, of USAToday, managed to get comments about these developments from WADA’s David Howman.
David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, declined to assess the strength of the evidence but told USA TODAY Sports, “I think it’s significant that it’s not an athlete alone being charged. It’s an athlete/entourage. I think the charge is significant.”
When asked about non-analytical cases and the fact that Armstrong hasn’t tested positive, Howman pointed to the sanctions against disgraced Olympic champion sprinter Marion Jones. “There have been a lot of athletes who have faced sanctions through non-analytical evidence,” Howman said. “We do not rely on science only nowadays. You cannot accept that science alone will find those who might be breaching the rules. So this is not unusual. It’s something that’s becoming more normal and accepted.”
Armstrong released a statement on his website, which says:
These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and advanced through testimony bought and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity. Although USADA alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy extended over more than 16 years, I am the only athlete it has chosen to charge. USADA’s malice, its methods, its star-chamber practices, and its decision to punish first and adjudicate later all are at odds with our ideals of fairness and fair play.
I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one. That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence.
Normally, there is an eight-year “statute of limitations” in pursuing anti-doping cases, but according to the Washington Post’s article, “USADA argues in its letter that evidence of banned acts outside of the eight-year limit can be losed [sic] to corroborate evidence within the limit, and the statute of limitations can be waived when the alleged violations were fraudulently concealed.” If so, Armstrong could potentially lose all of his Tour titles. But if the eight-year statute of limitations holds, he might only lose the titles from 2004 and 2005.
How good is the case against Armstrong? Hard to say. There is at least on potential flaw in their allegations, though. Again from the Washington Post article:
The letter further claims that Martial Saugy, the director of an anti-doping lab in Switzerland, stated that Armstrong’s urine sample results from the 2001 Tour of Switzerland indicated EPO use.
Saugy told The Post last year that Armstrong’s sample was merely “suspicious,” a designation that meant it could not be called positive. Further analysis with modern methods might bring clarity, Saugy said, but the sample no longer exists.
“We did not do the additional analysis. It will never be sufficient to say, in fact, it was positive,” Saugy said in an interview with The Post. “I will never go in front of a court with that type of thing.”
There’s a world of difference between getting a “suspicious” result and declaring a positive test result. On this point, at least, the letter seems to overstate USADA’s case.
Exactly how much we will hear about the case, or its outcome, remains to be seen. Robert Luskin, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, seems to indicate that Lance may not fight the charges. As The New York Times reports:
“Lance has never shrunk from a fair fight, and we haven’t decided whether or not this process affords him a fair opportunity to meet the charges head on,” Luskin said.
Generally speaking, the way the adjudication process works, Armstrong and his lawyers will probably not be able to question the science behind any test results, or even the test results — with the possible exception of any procedural errors that might have caused the results. (Not bloody likely.) So if the test results from 2009 – 2011 indicate blood doping, he’s probably not going to be able to beat that charge too easily. With the non-analytical evidence, it will all hinge on whether Armstrong’s team can cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses. In prior non-analytical positive cases, that hasn’t worked too well, either.
So the long and the short of it is, if this case goes forward, Lance Armstrong’s best bet would be to save his money and walk away. The only reason to fight would be to win in the court of public opinion. In the world of the anti-doping agencies and how they work, Armstrong’s case is already as good as lost.
Armstrong built an incredible myth and has done some good works outside of cycling. The myth will be forever destroyed. Even though it’s probably true that he didn’t do anything that his competitors weren’t also doing, if Armstrong broke the rules he must be held to account. Winning in the court of public opinion might have some value, at least in terms of limiting the damage to the LiveStrong brand, but it would come at a high price, financially and otherwise. And it won’t change the result in terms of the arbitration. Odds are he’ll lose. And if he appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, he’ll lose there, too.
So Lance, it’s time to move on. From cycling. From triathlons. Enjoy the nice things you’ve got. Fighting USADA is a fool’s errand. If you don’t believe me, just call your old pal Floyd Landis. He knows all too well the cost of trying to beat USADA.
Hi,
Lance bring me out of retirement!
Here is the 15 pages letter of USADA
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/armstrongcharging0613.pdf
Of course, we all knew that Lance doped, no top rider can improve his performance by 25% in 2years without doping.
Now Lance will have a difficult job to face testimonies of other riders and to explain how he was able to got a 48-49% hematocrit at the end of his TDF.
The best thing is to bring down with him Bruyneel and the crooked doctors.
Verbruggen and McQuaid should get difficult days to explain the corruption that occured in 1999-2005 and why did Lance never was prosecuted in 2009 despite having posted his blood values that showed doping (or a serious illness). How was it possible to ride Giro or TDF in that condition?
Indeed, I would like to know why they waited until now if there were valid positive test results from 2009 and 2010. There is a possibility that in 2010 USADA might have deferred to the Feds; as I recall that was the year that Landis came out with his confession and accusations, but I am not sure of the timing. There would have been no such reason in 2009, at least as far as I am aware. Could it be that these results are also more in the “suspicious” category rather than definitive, and USADA was waiting for non-analytical evidence to corroborate doping charges.
I can’t imagine Lance merely riding off into the sunset. He always has seemed to be ready to take on anyone and everyone who has charged him. But as Rant mentions, USADA opperates with a stacked deck. Time will tell.
My crystal ball predicts LA’s legal team will file a suit against USADA in federal court on numerous grounds, with the primary objective to throw aside the arbitration agreement, and level the playing field.
When your losing, change the rules.
Jean,
Lance brought me out of semi-retirement, too. At least now I have something to distract me from the insane political campaigns we have on this side of the pond. 😉 Thanks for the link to the charging letter, by the way.
William,
Good question. If they really had solid evidence from Armstrong’s bio passport, they could have moved against him much sooner. Perhaps it’s a bit iffy, and they need the added firepower of the non-analytical evidence, too.
BuzzyB,
That may well turn out to be Lance’s strategy. Change the venue and change the rules of the game. Sure wouldn’t surprise me to see something like that. With the high stakes involved for Armstrong, it certain would be worth a shot. An expensive shot, but if he’s got the money to burn…
Rant, I dissent.
If Armstrong did not give in when faced with Federal criminal charges, he’s not going to give in now.
It’s my understanding that the next step is review by “an independent anti-doping review panel”. It’s likely that the “independent” panel will rubber-stamp USADA’s (read: Travis Tygart’s) charges against Armstrong … at which point Armstrong’s next move (in my humble lawyer’s opinion) is to take the entire matter to federal court.
It’s not clear to me that USADA has the power to bring this action against Armstrong. USADA normally acts as the manager of the anti-doping program of some other national sports organization – for example, the U.S. Olympic Committee, or USA Cycling. So the Landis case began with the doping accusation that originated with the French anti-doping lab, but was made formally by the UCI. The UCI per its rules handed the case for initial prosecution to USA Cycling, which is how USADA got its jurisdiction. No one ever suggested that USADA could bring a case against Landis if UCI declined to make an anti-doping charge.
USADA is claiming here that it has the power to bring a case against an athlete without any adverse analytical finding (failed drug test) or any non-analytical accusation being made by any sports federation. This is, to put it mildly, odd. To put this into some context, let’s say that USADA is unhappy about the decision reached by Major League Baseball in the Ryan Braun case. Could USADA bring charges against Braun? Presumably not, because baseball has never agreed to allow USADA to manage baseball’s anti-doping program. USADA’s power over an athlete is, at least in theory, only that granted to USADA by the sport in which that athlete participates.
So this is the opening question: has USA Cycling effectively given USADA the independent power to INITIATE cases against cyclists, as opposed to prosecuting cases brought by USADA signatories? This is a significant question. It is one thing to say that your local district attorney has the power to prosecute a criminal case, and quite another to give that district attorney the power to go around arresting people to prosecute. But the question is not going to be decided by what I think is fair and just. The question will be decided first by USADA’s jurisdiction as established by law and its agreement with USA Cycling.
But there’s something else. The U.S. public is (I think) tired of spending tax dollars on chasing down famous athletes accused of doping (or lying about doping). We’re about to reach the conclusion of the absurd (and botched) case against Roger Clemens, where he is likely to be found innocent and the prosecutors are going to face adverse scrutiny. USADA is likely to find, if its proposed case against Armstrong gets to be too expensive, that Congress is not going to support the case with additional funds. In fact, someone in Congress is likely to consider how USADA currently has the funding to pursue cases against long-retired athletes, particularly those who are still popular and politically powerful.
We’ve said it here before: Armstrong does not have to defeat USADA. He simply has to outlast USADA, which I think he can do.
Great post. The strategy seems to be harpoon everyone that even looks funny. Not much of a legal strategy and frankly, one has to wonder how relevant this is at the current point in the game. Lance won consistently in a very dirty time in the sport, which either makes him the Michael Jordan of the game, or the best escapee of the dope-control crowd or both. So what? Are they really that afraid he’s going to be Ironman champ or something? That his future plans for competing spell doom for clean competition?
If USADA is going to tread this path, they are counting on LA’s truculent nature to hang himself in the court of public opinion to prove a case. That would seem to me to be a forlorn hope, if past is prologue.
The big irritation to the USA Cycling/USADA/Tour bureaucracy is that LA has MONEY. First through Tommy Weisel, and then through his own earnings, LA has been able to defend himself against BS (bureaucratic silliness) successfully for years. If he was dirty, what’s the point in dredging up decades-old “suspicions” no one can prove? MOVE ON!
USADA will waste a lot of money, enrich LA’s attorneys, and take a lot of deserved limelight away from Phinney and other American roadies when all is said and done.
Larry,
You raise an interesting point about whether USADA has the right to initiate a case against an athlete of their own accord. I’m not sure if this has already been tried, but if it has, it would have been with the first non-analytical positives that they pursued against Tim Montgomery and Kelli White. I don’t have the findings in their cases handy, so I’m not sure if that is how the deal went down with those two.
If this is a new approach, then Armstrong has some maneuvering room. If it’s the same approach as before, he might still be able to argue a lack of jurisdiction — although in “anti-doping world” that would fall flat I suspect. Going into the US courts certainly seems like an approach he might take. I haven’t seen the language on the pro licenses, but I suspect that there is some statement that the rider submits to the jurisdiction of the federation (USA Cycling) and their appointed enforcers (USADA). I believe there is such language on the amateur licenses, but I haven’t renewed mine recently.
Of all the athletes USADA has ever taken on, Lance is one of those with financial resources greater than the agency. If he decides to fight, I fully expect he could outlast them in that regard.
DC,
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that Travis Tygart and USADA are counting on Lance’s combative nature to push this case forward. Although I think it would be smarter — at least from a financial point of view — to walk away from the fight, I really can’t imagine Armstrong doing so.
Rant, I have not studied this carefully. USADA’s “charging letter” claims that USADA has jurisdiction under UCI anti doping rules, Articles 10, 13 and 18. Article 10 seems to be the rule applicable to Armstrong, and it reads as follows:
“The UCI has jurisdiction for and these Anti-Doping Rules shall apply to any anti-doping violation committed by a License-Holder where no Sample collection is involved and that is discovered:
(i) by the UCI, by one of its constituents or member Federations, by one of their officials, officers, staff members, members, License-Holders, or any other body or individual that is subject to the regulations of the UCI or one of its member Federations; or
(ii) by a body or individual that is not an Anti-Doping Organization.
Discovery means the finding of elements that turn out to be evidence for facts that apparently constitute an anti-doping rule violation, regardless of the Anti-Doping Organization who qualifies that evidence as such.”
The key fact here is that the body with jurisdiction here is UCI, not USADA. UCI anti-doping rule Article 12 appears to give UCI the ability to leave the case alone and let USADA proceed. But otherwise, it seems like this is UCI’s case, not USADA’s. At least, that’s what the UCI rules seem to say.
My best guess is that the Montgomery and White cases worked this same way, and that the governing sports authorities (IAAF, USOC) opted to let USADA proceed.
It would be odd if UCI has “jurisdiction” over this case and opposed it going forward, but USADA still had the power to prosecute. What could get interesting is that UCI might actually OPPOSE USADA’s actions. USADA has once again brought up the alleged cover-up of Armstrong’s 2001 EPO test results. If there was a cover-up, it’s reasonably likely that UCI participated in the cover-up. I suppose that USADA might act to enforce UCI’s anti-doping rules against UCI’s wishes …
http://bit.ly/LGlKth
In any event, if I’m Armstrong, I’m bringing an action in federal court to block USADA from going forward, on the ground that it lacks jurisdiction in the absence of a directive from UCI. UCI can then sit on this case for a typical period (for “typical”, see the Contador case).
If I recall correctly, things didn’t turn out very well for either Moby Dick or Captain Ahab.
Cub,
I think you’re right. And perhaps this pattern will repeat itself as the tale of USADA vs. Lance Armstrong plays out.
Larry,
Thanks for looking that up, and for the link to the Ashenden story. Do you think it’s possible that USADA is going it alone because they believe that the UCI is corrupt, and thus would let Lance skate? Or could it be that USA Cycling has quietly assented to the investigation, being his home federation during the years he competed? On the other hand, given that 5 individuals mentioned in the charging letter aren’t US citizens, that seems a bit of a stretch — especially when combined with the fact that USAC’s top people are said to be Armstrong loyalists.
I’m guessing that we won’t have to wait too long before we see whether Armstrong follows the strategy that you’ve sketched out. The “independent review board” is supposed to receive all comments, documentation, objections, counterarguments, etc. by next Friday. Not sure when they’re scheduled to review the material, but if they hold to form, they will recommend that a case be opened. There may be an instance of the review board not rubber-stamping USADA’s requests, but I can’t think of when it might have occurred — or even if it occurred.
Once that official determination has been made, I’d expect Armstrong’s side to put their defense into high gear. It will be interesting to see how a court would rule on this. Any idea how that part of the story would play out?
Red Sky at night, Sailor’s delight..
Red Sky in morning, Sailors take warning..
Not sure I care anymore, but over time it’s developed into a habit I can’t drop.. And I need to see the train finally wreck..
AC,
“I hear a train a’ comin’
It’s comin’ `round the bend…”
😉
Rant, the USADA claim about “suspicious” Armstrong blood values from 2009-10 has Ashenden’s fingerprints all over it. I suspect this is the same argument that WADA tried to make in the Contador case, in effect arguing that something short of a biological passport positive can be used as evidence in a doping case. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see Ashenden speaking up so quickly.
The question of WHEN Armstrong might go to federal court is an interesting one. Again, I’m not doing the legal research, but there’s a legal concept that requires one to exhaust non-court remedies before seeking help in court. So, Armstrong’s team may have decided not to go to court until the “independent review board” finishes up its rubber stamping duties. It is possible that Armstrong’s team might wait until after an arbitration decision, but then they’d run into that OTHER legal principle, which is that courts don’t like to review arbitration decisions.
The question of UCI versus USADA is a fascinating one. The Armstrong people must be thinking long and hard about it: how can they best play one side against the other, for maximum benefit for their client? The ideal would be to cause UCI to claim jurisdiction over the case and order it dropped, but any action this overt might reflect badly on UCI and its anti-doping posture, particularly on the eve of the Tour de France. I’m sure that UCI would prefer to act more quietly if possible.
Consider the case from UCI’s standpoint. There’s nothing positive here for them. At BEST, the case threatens to further damage the reputation of pro cycling. More realistically, the case threatens to further damage the reputation of UCI. Even without the allegations of doping cover-ups, the case will cause people to question UCI’s management of the sport. While the Armstrong allegations might be viewed as ancient history, the allegations leveled against people like Bruyneel will lead people to ask why UCI has tolerated their presence in this sport for so long.
On the other hand, UCI does itself no good if it comes out in opposition to USADA and tries to put a stop to this case. In such a case, UCI will look like it is engaging in a cover-up, and as we know, the consequences of the cover-up are always worse than the consequences of whatever it is that got covered up.
So … we might say that UCI’s best hope is that it can keep a low profile in the hope that this, too, will pass.
Armstrong, of course, wants UCI to intervene. But UCI is a contrary bunch. They like to call the shots. They don’t like their hand to be forced. Moreover, it will look really bad if UCI appears to be doing Armstrong’s bidding. So … what is best for the Armstrong team is to get UCI to take control of the case without making it LOOK like they caused UCI to take control of the case …
… which is why it’s so interesting that USADA has made a case that appears to be an indirect attack on UCI, because USADA may be creating a situation where it’s impossible for UCI to remain on the sidelines.
All this is an argument why Armstrong and his team may NOT act all that quickly. Instead, they may want to wait to see if USADA manages on its own to provoke UCI to take over this case.
A few questions :
(1) WHY? What is the point after all this time? Seriously, what is the end game here? The US doesn’t give a shit about cycling so there is no “mandate” that they “clean it up”.
(2) Did the Feds have an understanding with USADA that the latter would ‘take over’ the prosecution after they dropped out? And why DID the Feds drop the case?
(3) If Lance’s many multiple tests in 2009 & 2010 were so blatantly apparent of “EPO & blood manipulation” then why the hell didn’t they charge him THEN? (BTW, Lance’s Tour result in 2010 could be the perfect rebuttal to the ‘powerful effects” of doping… 😉
(4) And most ‘especially’ – did the tester take the samples right to the lab within an hour or were they in his sole possession over a weekend? Hmmmmmm? If the “Braun defense” is good enough for the BILLION dollar sport of baseball, why not cycling?! (BTW, I searched in vain a few months ago for a article titled “Braun not Beef!” & came up bupkis. Sigh. 😉
If Lance doesn’t fight this, it would be an even bigger mistake than doping. His reputation & image already took a massive hit when Piece of Shit Landis crawled out from under his rock in 2010 & then last year when Hamilton whined to 60 Minutes. If he thinks it truly won’t matter if his Tour wins are stripped, he is even more delusional than IF he doped & treated too many people like crap & never thought it would come back to bite him in the ass. Not only would Livestrong go under, he would find out how quickly one can be dropped by the glitterati (celebs, politicians, etc), AND tragically realize that his kids lives could be damaged even more than his own.
After daily/year after year witnessing the LACK of concentrated dope testing in pro football, baseball, basketball, soccer, I think the current Anti-Doping effort is a FARCE. Until ALL professional sports are tested the same & PUNISHED the same, i.e. ‘on the SAME PLAYING FIELD’ (ironic, no?), then it’s all just a load of horsesh*t.
Just one example – do you think ANY NFL fan gives a crap what his team’s players use to get ready &/or play the game? As long as the player can keep making plays, they don’t care what he ingests or shoots into himself. But of course, BILLIONS of of dollars are involved here.
Instead of falling all over themselves to be 1st in line to denounce Lance, why is there not even ONE sports “journalist” screaming about the huge disparity in the testing, punishment & level of concern of doping between the BIG MONEY sports & the small Olympic-type ones? The latter are being driven into NONEXISTENCE while the BIG MONEY sports make even MORE MONEY. Now, THAT sounds like a “conspiracy”!
The rich get richer & the poor man gets the shaft.
BTW, despite my anger & contempt of crook Landis, I actually do empathize with cyclists who were thrown out of the sport for testing positive while other cyclists who ALSO tested positive are back in the sport. And that there seemed to be some kind of bidding war for Contador’s services after his LAUGHABLE 6 second punishment is enough to make a blackballed cyclist go, er, “postal” (can’t help myself 😉 ).
But you know, when you sign a deal with the devil, you need to READ THE FINE PRINT.
Susie b, I’ll give you a response and Rant probably will too.
To your four questions:
1. The number of answers you may get to this question will probably be equal to the number of people you ask. As we’ve seen from the cases involving Clemens, Bonds et. al., there seems to be no time limit on the interest prosecutors have in pursuing alleged dopers. USADA’s defenders will talk about “clean sport”, and if Armstrong loses those 7 Tour victories, I guess that sends a message of sort to would-be dopers: if you dope, you can succeed at the highest level of the sport, make millions, enjoy world-wide fame, date rock stars, and retire to perform philanthropic work, only to have USADA come after you years later. Not that anyone has ever proven that Armstrong doped. Oh well. I’m sure that others will give you a less snarky answer.
2. I doubt that the Feds had any understanding with USADA. I think that USADA and a lot of others were expecting the Feds to prosecute Armstrong, and were disappointed that this didn’t happen. If you’re looking for a less snarky answer to your question 1, I think it’s that USADA felt that the Feds should have prosecuted.
3. Regarding the 2009 and 2010 blood tests: Armstrong wasn’t charged with doping back in 2009 and 2010, because those blood tests didn’t prove that he’d doped. This kind of blood testing is based on a very complicated form of statistical analysis, where a person’s blood values are measured over time, at which point the anti-doping czars look at the probability that such values could have been produced naturally. If the probability is sufficiently small, then doping is assumed. It looks like USADA will argue that Armstrong’s values were improbable – not so improbable as to constitute a failed doping test, but improbable enough to be used in combination with other evidence to prove the case against Armstrong. Naturally, Armstrong has arguments he can make against this sort of (mis)use of his blood testing.
4. Don’t get me started on the Braun case! The question of storage and transport of doping samples is a difficult one.
But when it comes to blood testing in cycling, particularly testing done during a Tour, the testers ARE careful to store the blood under temperature-controlled conditions and to test the blood promptly. Blood is a much more delicate matrix than urine (the matrix involved in the Braun case). Naturally, the Armstrong team will want to examine all the evidence they can get, but it’s HIGHLY unlikely that Armstrong’s blood was ever stored in some tester’s basement.
As for whether Lance should fight … the problem is that in a USADA arbitration, Armstrong has almost no chance to win, regardless of how strong a case he might have. I agree with you that Armstrong cannot risk doing nothing … the question is, is there a better course of action open to him?
As for your point about other sports … good point! The sport *I* question most is basketball. Guys who are 6 foot 10 don’t get that muscular naturally. But look at it from the other side: if I made YOU basketball czar, would YOU put USADA in charge of your anti-doping program? Perhaps you’d like to see Travis Tygart bringing cases this year against Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan?
susie b,
So I’ll take a stab at those questions, too.
1) Why? Because they can. Lance has been a target for so many years that now that USADA has enough “evidence” they can launch a case. Like Larry said, I would hazard a guess that they believe holding Lance to account will send a message that says no matter how successful a person is, they aren’t above the rules. Given Armstrong’s resources, this fight could seriously bleed both him and USADA. USADA will come out the worse for the wear dollar-wise, but Armstrong will pay a hefty price, too, even if he wins.
2) Agreement with the Feds? You mean like when they shared evidence with USADA in the Balco investigation? It’s possible, though most recent stories have suggested this didn’t happen. But just because that’s the current line doesn’t mean that some information didn’t get shared — even if it was just names of witnesses who might be helpful (though, honestly, those names have been pretty well known and USADA should have been able to figure that out on their own).
3) From what I gather, there is some controversy between some of the experts and either the UCI or other agencies as to what values in a biological passport should trigger a case. Armstrong’s values may have been suspicious, but they may not have gone past the point where he would have been charged back then. At least one expert (Michael Ashenden, I believe) has spoken publicly that he thought Armstrong was doing some form of blood doping when he came back to pro cycling. (That comeback may have been a big mistake, in retrospect, eh?)
4) So far, it’s not entirely clear which test results are the ones USADA is going to use to back up it’s case, so whether the samples were handled properly or not is an open question. My guess is that they probably were handled correctly. In the Braun case, it appears that the subcontractor had a process in place regarding the storage of samples that the MLB didn’t know about and wasn’t agreed to with the players. So, because it wasn’t part of the standard MLB/players process, Braun was able to successfully challenge the results. Both sides have to play by the agreed upon rules, after all. Whadaya bet they’ve rectified that situation by now?
I expect that Lance will fight this case in some way. It’s pretty much in his DNA, as far as I can tell, to fight back against these kinds of allegations. I’m not sure what approach he will use, but I’m guessing it won’t be long before we find out.
And, hey, it’s distracting me from the bloody mess that is our political campaign season — which is enough to get my blood pressure skyrocketing, so a bit of distraction is a good thing. Interesting times ahead, that’s for sure.
Remember back in 2008 or 2009 on Johan’s team (think it was Astana at that point) there was a guy (Russian I think but can’t remember) who the UCI fingered as having “suspicious levels” on his biological passport & thus they suspended him? The Astana team then had to fire him. Well, the guy fought the case all the way to CAS & HE WON. Told me right then that the bio passport was NOT the anti-doping “secret weapon” all had professed it to be.
If Lance’s 2009 & 2010 tests (& my god, there were at least 50-100 of them!) “violated” any of the “agreed-upon” levels for a positive, then WHY was he not suspended then?! Is USADA trying to suggest that the UCI & all the labs that tested his pee were in a CONSPIRACY? Even the French?!!
And btw, what IS the “proper procedure” for getting cycling samples to a lab? Do they differ than other sports? WHY? And sorry Rant, but your “agreed upon” phrase made me laugh – unlike the BIG MONEY sports, active athletes in cycling & other Olympic-type sports don’t get the opportunity to vote on much of anything in their sports, least of all, the anti-doping agenda.
You know how fans often shout that a certain amount of a certain drug wouldn’t “help” the athlete’s performance so why should he be busted but the Anti-doping forces always point out “them’s da rules”? Well, the Anti-doping forces are NOW trying to change THEIR VERY OWN RULES by changing what constitutes a positive. Growing up on a farm, I can tell ya that is BULLSH*T.
As regarding why the Feds dropped the case & USADA picked it up – I think the Feds saw the writing on the wall with the Bonds verdict & were too far in to go back on the Clements trial but today’s JURY verdict does not shock them. Would a JURY really convict LANCE – a cancer-fighting HERO who beat the French at “their race”? Altogether now – “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” So, they figured the only way to get Lance was to throw him to USADA where there is NO jury of peers & where many rules of LAW do NOT even seem evident.
Well, the Feds have now struck out on Clements.
There are several possible explanations why they dropped the case against Lance Et al:
1. There was no good evidence of a violation of federal law, even if there was evidence of violation of cycling rules.
2. There was some evidence of federal violation, but they decided the case was too weak.
3. The evidence showed there were some federal violations, but only for misdemeanors, and the decided it wasn’t worth it to proceed.
My guess is that, while some people like Landis and Hamilton were willing to drop a dime on LA, there were others who were willing to support him. The former could testify about their tale of the broken down bus, while others could deny it ever took place. It is highly unlikely there is any hard evidence, so the case is pretty weak. Drop it and move on, maybe turn info over to USADA and let them take a crack.
susie b,
That’s the difference between a sport that has collective bargaining (baseball) and one that doesn’t. The anti-doping provisions in the MLB are subject to negotiation. The anti-doping regulations vis-a-vis USADA and WADA are imposed.
As far as transporting samples goes, I believe the procedures are spelled out in the WADA code, though I can’t cite chapter and verse. What they have to do is ensure that the samples are stored appropriately and delivered as quickly as possible to the testing lab (often through specialized couriers). In big events, like the Tour, they sometimes go to great lengths to make sure the samples are shipped properly and arrive in a timely manner.
With the Braun case, the sample was supposed to be dropped off at FedEx to be shipped out that day. For whatever reason, the tester couldn’t get to a FedEx dropoff point in time. The company that contracted his services had a procedure that allowed him to store it at home, and ship out the next possible day (which, in this case, was two days later). MLB didn’t know of that procedure, and it wasn’t written into their anti-doping rules. So, because technically the collection procedure was not followed to the letter of the law, Braun skated.
William and susie b,
I just saw that Clemens was found not guilty on all counts. I wonder how the Feds felt about the evidence in his case. If they thought it was stronger than the evidence in Lance’s situation, I can easily imagine what would have happened if Armstrong had been prosecuted. The idea that they might have taken a pass, and effectively said to USADA, “knock yourselves out” … er … “here you go guys, maybe you’ll have better luck” sounds pretty plausible to me.
There is an interesting and long podcast about that affair, UCI, Bruyneel and more.
http://velocastcc.squarespace.com/race-radio/2012/6/17/scott-plays-switzerland.html
Rant, according to Will Carroll, the Braun team took a urine sample from Braun, which tested negative. They then stored the sample under conditions similar to that used by the collection agent, and retested the sample, at which point it tested positive.
This is a part of the science behind doping testing that we did not examine closely in the Landis case. Urine is a “live matrix”, and chemical changes DO take place in urine over time, particularly if the urine is not refrigerated. The ADAs themselves realize this, as they conduct tests on urine samples in an attempt to detect such degradation. But the science of detecting urine degradation is far from perfect, as you can see by examining scientific studies of potential better ways of performing these tests.
These studies state the facts plainly: it IS possible for urine to degrade in such a way that can cause an athlete to test positive for testosterone use. Both the T/E test and the CIR test can be affected in this way.
Given all these facts, I do not think that Braun “skated”. I think Braun showed that something was substantively wrong with the procedures used by MLB that may well have caused him to test positive.
Larry,
Glad to have someone who followed Braun’s case commenting here. I was under the impression that the arbitrator(s) ruled in favor of Braun primarily because of the procedural error. I wasn’t aware that Braun’s lawyers had done such a test with those kinds of results. Should’ve done a bit more digging on my part.
I believe I’ve seen references to the fact that the urine “matrix” can degrade over time, actually. In fact, I think one of Arnie Baker’s initial arguments from Landis’ “Wiki Defense” was that the test for “free testosterone” produced a result that by WADA’s standards meant the sample was spoiled (a/k/a degraded), hence any results should be ignored as potentially wrong. (Not that Landis wasn’t doping in the Tour, as it turns out, just that his “positive” for testosterone was probably incorrect, in the same way that Braun’s may have been incorrect.) Thanks for setting me straight about Braun’s defense. I stand corrected.
Rant, just to be clear, we don’t have the arbitrator’s decision in the Braun case, and it appears that we’ll never know the grounds for his ruling. Baseball keeps such things confidential. The report on the substantive grounds for the decision has come from a single journalist, Will Carroll of si.com, and his report is based on unnamed sources. I personally trust Carroll, but it should be noted that (to my knowledge) no journalist has independently verified Carroll’s report.
You’re right about Landis and the Arnie Baker “wiki defense”. I don’t remember what happened to that portion of the Landis defense. In the Braun case, we had a lot of MSM reporting to the effect that artificial testosterone could not appear out of nowhere, no matter how the urine might have been handled. I recall that this was something said by Travis Tygart, the self-appointed special doping prosecutor extraordinaire. Unfortunately, it takes thought and analysis to show that this reporting is wrong.
Larry,
So it sounds like the Braun decision will always be a bit of a mystery, at least as far as the arbitrator’s reasoning goes. Interesting point about the Wiki Defense that relates to more current cases. I don’t believe Landis had an expert analysis of the lab’s documentation prior to the review board rubber-stamping the opening of an anti-doping case against him. But that would have been precisely the time to trot out that argument, so that the review board could consider whether the case should even be pursued. I think that argument was made at the first arbitration hearing, but I don’t recall it being a major point of contention. It should have been, though. If a sample is spoiled, the results really aren’t meaningful.
If that had been the case, Landis would have been cleared. Knowing what we know now, by Landis’ own admissions, the end result of the hearings wound up meting out the right punishment, but for the wrong crime.
Regarding Braun, I saw a couple of weeks ago an article on ESPN.com to the effect of: if Braun’s MVP season last year was fueled by PEDs, how come he is putting up similar numbers this year, when presumably he is clean? Seems to me some time back, in the early years of Landis, we had some passing comments about some cyclist, for example Miller, who were busted, served their time, and came back as good as ever.
In Braun’s case, I think the basic premise is faulty. Baseball is a sport demanding a great deal of skill. Bonds may well have bulked up with steroids and turned into a power hitter, but first of all he had to be a hitter. Doesn’t matter how strong you are, if you can’t hit big league pitching, nothing will help you. True, you still might get an edge with PEDs, and turn some of those long doubles into home runs, but I doubt that any PED will take someone flirting with the Mendoza line and turn him into a .300 hitter.
Cycling is different. It is most a sport of physical prowess. You can be the most skillful of bike handlers, if you can’t ride at 40+ kph for mile after mile, you won’t succeed. So PEDs have potential to change an also ran domestique into a TdF contender.
On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if PEDs are truly as powerful as we sometimes think, or whether they are more of a shortcut: take this stuff and I don’t have to train so hard to reach a given level of performance. No PED will ever make me into a TdF contender, even when I was young. Given that road cycling lacks any sort of standards in terms of fixed distances, etc. (like track), it becomes a bit hard to actually objectively compare performances from one year to the next. So if a rider dopes, gets a few percentage points better, but then gets busted; serves the time; and comes back seemingly as good as 2 years ago, are they really the same? Did PEDs really make them vastly stronger, or just a little bit, maybe enough to win an extra race or 2, or finish a couple of places higher in a big race.
I think that no matter what the PED’s actually do, if you THINK they helped, then they did. The mind is the most powerful weapon we have, and if you trick that into truly believing you are stronger, then you are (wonder if anybody’s ever done a double-blind study of peds w/ athletes…make them THINK they are getting the juice but in reality some are not..see how they compare w/ the ones actually geting the good stuff).
So…w/ Clemmens off the hook (and the Feds ON the hook for wasting MILLIONS of taxpayer $’s), what happens to the Lance case? Just how is the USADA funded? Do they have to ask the gov for more $ to mount the prosecution? It certainly won’t be the run of the mill case on their end… Just curious, as I’m not sure where / how they get their money.
William and Matt, quite a while ago I proposed doing some testing to see if PEDs were actually PE. The post/comments are here:
http://rant-your-head-off.com/WordPress/?p=2322
Can Clemens recover his legal fees? You normally can in a civil case that you win, but what are the rules here for what Clemens has gone through? He choose to spend his resources on defense, so it is his nickel? Can he bring a civil suit against the Feds to recover his costs?
There certainly can be a placebo effect, however I doubt that it can create a podium contender out of an also ran, or that it would have a long lasting effect. Might get someone to make a hard effort in one race, but not for a whole season or career. I can also see a possibility of a negative effect: I take something and think I am going to fly, but find that when the rubber hits the road, I am the same old cyclist I always was.
I doubt that Clements can recover legal expenses. There is a concept of prosecutorial discretion: but a prosecutor must make hard decisions about who to prosecute and who not to prosecute as a necessary part of his job, he can’t be held accountable for those decisions. Its not hard and fast, but I would think that, unless a prosecution was malicious and/or in wanton disregard of the facts, any defendant is on his own for legal costs, unless he is indigent and gets a public defender. The feds may have well been unwise to prosecute Clements, especially the second time around, but I think there was some justification, at least enough that we can’t label it as malicious.
This is news to me, but apparently it IS possible for a federal criminal defendant to recover at least a portion of their legal fees. But it is very difficult to do so, and Clemens has (IMHO) no chance of being able to do so. Those interested can read further: http://bit.ly/Lm5A9S.
Quick notes about the PE of PEDs.
In cycling, there’s little doubt about the performance-enhancing potential of at least some PEDs. For example, see the study discussed here on the effects of EPO use on performance during cycling. The study found that “reasonably fit cyclists” saw a 54% increase in performance when using EPO. Naturally, that doesn’t mean they’d finish a stage in 4 hours without EPO and 2 hours with EPO … the 54% increase was in the “Time to Exhaustion” (riding at 80% of previously determined Peak Power Output). Also, the study participants were not elite athletes, and it’s likely that pro cyclists would not see benefits to this same extent. But the potential for performance enhancement is still significant on the pro level. http://bit.ly/3kn7z5
If you want to look at baseball, then things get murkier. In a lab, you can measure a cyclist’s time to exhaustion or peak power output, and assume that those measurements have something to do with the cyclist’s performance on the road. There are no such accepted measurements for performance in baseball. The ability to throw a baseball 90+ MPH, or the ability to hit a baseball thrown that quickly, does not seem to depend on a few easily measurable performance indicators that can be lab-tested. Instead, the best study on the effects of PEDs in baseball (IMHO) was performed by statistician Nate Silver (who may be better known for his political data analysis at places such as http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/). Silver looked at the performance of baseball players during the so-called “Juiced Era” between 1994 and 2004, and found a relatively small increase in expected performance. Silver concluded that the available evidence shows that PEDs can result in performance increases in baseball players, but that the effect on overall performance is a lot less than most of us might expect. Some of Silver’s work is reprinted here: http://bit.ly/cwr1SC
In the Braun case, we need to consider that Braun was accused of using steroids near the end of the baseball season. No baseball player in his right mind would be cycling steroids during the baseball season — the accepted consensus is that PED-using ballplayers “juice” to gain strength in the off-season. Thus it’s likely that any baseball player using steroids in October is doing so to promote muscle recovery between games … sort of like what Landis was accused of doing in 2006 (and what he admitted to having done in other years). So, the difference between Braun’s 2011 and 2012 performance levels means next to nothing.
It is very difficult to reach real-world conclusions for any of this. I think we can safely say that some PEDs can produce meaningful performance gains for most professional athletes, at least in the short-term. But there will be considerable variation from one athlete to another and from one sport to another. My own suspicion is that PED use makes an athlete more susceptible to injury, which may make PEDs a performance-inhibitor if we consider a longer term. Obviously, much depends on HOW PEDs are used, and what ELSE the athlete does to improve performance. Also, it is likely that some PEDs on the WADA banned list have no performance-enhancing potential, and that other PEDs can enhance performance only if present in an athlete’s system in an amount significantly above that prohibited by WADA.
However, as a general matter, I firmly believe that PEDs have the potential to increase the performance of pro athletes, and I think that overall the anti-doping effort (for all of its abuses) is presently working to make pro sports more fair.
54% increase in time to exhaustion? Holy CATS! WHERE CAN I GET ME SOME EPO?? Me LIKEY!! And Sheesh…being SOOOO not-pro, I might even get MORE than 54%! SIGN ME UP!
(I race only against myself…and my brother, and the guys I ride with, and any person I see on the road ahead of me, and anybody who passes me, and…and…and..
but I’m not a racer.
Good summary Larry. I think that indeed, there can be some benefit for endurance and/or power athletes using some PEDs. What I would like to know, and probably never will, is whether or not an athlete could get to the same place with a suitably intensive training program.
In my mind, any athlete, whether a top pro or a weekend warrior, has 2 potentials. One is the current potential: if I go out today, with my current age, fitness, etc., there is a theoretical maximum performance I am capable of. Most of us seldom if ever reach that maximum, and one way, IMO, that top athletes differ from the rest of us folks is in their ability to force themselves to a greater percentage of that maximum.
But in addition, we also have an overall maximum level. While I am well past my prime, if I had devoted a great deal of time when in my youth to training for cycling, using the best methods, there is a theoretical maximum that I could ever achieve. Who knows, if I had devoted a full time effort to training instead of going to college, maybe I could have been a pro, more likely not, but I certainly could have achieved a higher level of performance.
So, say if when I was 21, I had devoted a full time effort to training and hired the services of a knowledgable coach to guide me, I would have been ultimately capable of a maximum best time for a 25 mile TT of 55 minutes. If I were to have doped, would I then be capable of a better time, or merely be able to reach that maximum with less effort in training?
Oh, I know, every single year this happens right before the Tour. And every single year, the same classic film quotation keeps running through my head:
“No, please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who….”
WS, once we start talking about what an individual can achieve, we’re in a fuzzy area. I’ve seen studies where some participants take artificial testosterone, and their testosterone levels do not budge. I know of athletes who have admitted to “juicing”, and their intake of PEDs coincided with a performance decline. YMMV, as they say. But as a general matter, in cycling, the best evidence is that riders can perform better with PEDs plus intensive training than they can perform with intensive training alone.
LJ, it is just a coincidence that the 60 Minutes piece on Lance/Floyd/Tyler, the USADA announcement, and the original Landis confession of guilt just happened to take place before the onset of the Tour de France (or was the Landis announcement on the eve of the Tour of California?). None of the parties involved in these events had any interest in exploiting a Tour for a little extra publicity. All participants were motivated exclusively by concern for clean sport. My tongue is now so firmly implanted in my cheek, I may never again be able to consume an ice cream cone.
Stayed out of this for a while, but have a few comments.
It is no coincidence this is happening before the TdF. TdF organizers must love the nouveau news cycle, of which they have become a focus, for all the wrong reasons. It may be just me, but I’m thinking the cure is worse than the disease? Regardless, it certainly has turned into a galactic cluster f*$k.
If you think (as I do) that the hearing at Pepperdine exposed the WADA/USADA system as the Bravo Sierra that it is, then wait for Armstrong’s legal team, and the resources behind them, to lock horns with with the infamous self righteous bureaucracy.
Disclaimer: I have no love for LA and am still a Floyd supporter. WADA is just plain evil.
Indeed, the area of human performance is rather fuzzy. It’s one thing to be able to measure something like hemocrit or VO2 max, and see whether and to what extent a given drug or training regimen effects that and it’s another to try to determine how that all effects performance. For one thing, there is a great deal of psychology going on: if I ask you to ride a 40k TT as hard a you can, am I sure that in fact you did indeed put forth your maximum effort? You yourself might not be sure. And if I have you ride the same course on say a weekly basis, and you show improvement, might not some of that improvement be do to the fact that you become more familiar with the course and distance and just how hard you can ride and still not blow up or on the other hand, finish with something still in the tank? A poor performance just might be due to something outside of the sport itself: you just had a fight with the spouse, or you’re worried about paying bills, or your kid is having trouble in school. Next week these problems are resolved and your performance goes up, and not because of PEDs or training.
All this makes it really hard to do rigorous scientific testing. Add to that the fact that the really top riders are not available for testing PEDs. The study you mention, where cyclists of modest abilities averaged 54% improvement in time to exhaustion by using PEDs: how much improvement would a similar group show by simply training regularly? The casual cyclist has the greatest potential for a performance increase simply because he or she is at the lower end of their own personal potential.
Oh well, this is all fun to speculate about, but we are not likely to see much in the way of real research in these areas. Unless the military is doing some research; we know that the military has (and probably still does) on occasions provided stimulants to troops to combat fatigue and increase performance and they just might be interested in using other sorts of PEDs. But than any research they do is likely to be classified.
PED as doping are used in sport since many years. RDA, USSR,… and many other countries had programs to study their effects on athletes, or on soldiers.
They are effective.
Of course, sometimes that cannot work for different reasons (bad product, illness, bad dosage,…) but that don’t change that T, Hgh, … are enhancing performance of most people including world champions.
The question is not “if” they are performance enhancing. It’s more about “how much”. Quantifying the effect would be useful in determining if it’s worth the time and expense to have a specific substance on the banned list, especially considering the witch hunt climate we’ve had rammed down our throats for the last decade or so, courtesy of WADA World. YMMV.
How much ?
Enough to have a blue train made of routier outperforming climber on a difficult mountain stage of TDF.
Enough for having an anonymous pro-rider like Riis to win TDF.
Enough for Lance to win 7TDF in a row despite having never showed abilities for GT…
If it were not worth, I doubt that Lance would have used PED after his cancer, and after the illness of the team members of his junior US team who were doped by Carmichael.
PED trafficking is a major income for mafias around the world, so there is a good reason to try to stop that. Of course, healt of athletes is important too.
Jean C
As for the performances you cited, all anecdotal.
Anecdotal does not help with quantifying.
Otherwise, a rehash or old accusations.
As for mafias and other enterprises interested in making money, their products don’t have to work. Their customers just need to believe they do. Just saying……
Jean C, in an environment when doping was common, how could one athlete post extraordinary performances by doping? How could one doping athlete consistently triumph over a field of doping athletes? There are many possible answers, but the dope is not one of these answers.
The more difficult argument from your side is: in an environment when doping was common, how could one athlete keep up with the others without doping? THEN you get into the question of whether one athlete could have such exceptional talent that he did not need to dope in order to win.
And let’s take this in a somewhat different direction: one idea common is that in the last few years, many athletes adopted a strategy of “micro-dosing” in order to get (some) benefit of PED usage while minimizing chances of being detected, as least with current testing methods. The question then arises: how much benefit does one actually get in this manner? While one might well register 54% increase with a “full” does of EPO, maybe you only get a micro-benefit with a micro-dose. Depending on the size of our putative micro-benefit, it only may confer a slight advantage to a doper, such that many clean athletes still might have a chance to beat him. In fact, if the benefit is small enough, it can become swallowed up in “noise”: all the other factors that come into play in deciding a cycle race, like tactics, bike handling skill, strength of team support, psychological factors, etc. Even in a totally clean race, the winner is not necessarily the one with the highest democrat or VO2 max.
So it may be that, while anti-doping efforts have not necessarily eliminated doping, if they have reduced it to this level of micro-dosing and micro-benefits, we may have at least a partial success.
That was sort of my idea with the attempt to quantify the level of enhancement through experiment. If, say, you can detect levels of 50 picograms of clenbuterol, but through actual performance testing it can be shown that it takes 10,000 times higher doses to have any measurable impact on performance, then it becomes trivial to set lower limits and just ignore microdosing. The idea that the microscopic (nay, nanoscopic) levels detected can have any performance gain for many of these substances is pure fantasy, so instead of having clear evidence that someone has done something wrong, the best we get is equivocal evidence. When you have people doing things that give them a clear (non-placebo) benefit over their competitors, then I can agree with attempts to monitor, instead we spend most of our time blathering about levels of ‘doping’ that are likely orders of magnitude below having a measurable enhancement effect and are likely to be solidly in the realm of placebo effect.
Larry,
Like everything, doping can be done better by some doctors… that is why Dr. Ferrari was well paid by Armstrong: to have the best chemical motor!
Then you can add corruption of UCI to get away in case of a positive test,
You can have Dr. Del Moral sending samples of team riders to WADA lab in Spain to test them and adjust their specific doping program.
I am not sure that every team was doing the same.
I know your feelings for Armstrong, he had to wait 27yo to be able to challenge climber. Around half of the EPO positive samples found by retrotesting belonged to Lance, meaning that he was probably more doped than the average riders.
Yes I agree with you, some teams and riders have special talent… to dope better, more (or worse) .
During Cold War, some countries had a specific doping programs, but no one could touch east-german women, because they were 1 or 2 steps further than everyone and were able to take more risks than others. Nothing has changed, some athletes are still focused on winning and will do everything to achieve their goal.
Jean C, it is of course possible that Dr. Ferrari knew more about doping than anyone else, and that consequently Armstrong doped better than anyone else. But there’s no evidence of this. Your evidence (and again, I do not find this evidence to be conclusive) only argues that Armstrong doped. It does not argue that Armstrong doped better than anyone else.
Your only argument that Lance was the best doper is that he won 7 Tours. But that argument is circular. You can’t argue that Lance won because he doped the best, and also argue that he doped the best because he won.
Did you not have the response filed Friday? Here it is:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/lance.html
I’ve read the response. Need to get in gear and write a follow up post. The quote from Floyd’s book was priceless, given that Landis has completely changed his tune vis-a-vis whether he saw Lance dope.
A number of points they made have the eery ring of familiarity to them. Except, the last time, the guy making those arguments wasn’t a “national icon.”
Long story short, I think we’ve seen a preview of Lance’s legal strategy. It will be interesting to see exactly how it all plays out.
I think any attempt to determine who is or isn’t doping based solely on results is very shaky at best. For one thing, there’s a matter of simple math: if by doping you improve your performance (whatever that means) by X%, if I am naturally (no dope) (X+1)% better than you, I still can beat you, if only narrowly.
However, human performance is much more complicated than that and whoever wins a race is not solely determined by who has the best “motor”. Motivation and other psychological factors, temporary physical factors (someone had a bad night’s sleep, or is coming down with a cold or the flu, etc.), tactics and strategy, team support and so on all come into play.
Look at our friend Floyd: despite the now admitted fact that he was doping during the 2006 TdF, he still had 2 quite disastrous days. The first, after he first got the yellow early on, he explains as a tactic of letting go of the lead in order to not waste strength defending. I’ll buy the general idea of that, it is a common enough tactic. But his idea that dropping 30 minutes was part of the paln, or at least a fortuitous result I think is just so much spin. I doubt that he intended to drop that much time, unless perhaps he was engaging in some sort of sandbagging, hoping to conceal he strength in hopes others would cross him off their lists of riders to watch. And certainly, he did not intend to lose all that time on that disastrous stage 16, for what ever reason, he had a bad day. He chalked it up to the fact that his team car was not able to get up to him and supply him with food and water and he thus bonked from lack of fuel and hydration, to me a reasonable explanation. Anyway, he was doping and nevertheless still humanly frail at times.
What we can do, perhaps, is use performance to guide where to spend most of our effort. The Lanterne Rouge in the Tour well may be doping, but it probably isn’t worth to spend much time and effort trying to catch him. But maybe, if next year he suddenly is battling for the lead, we just might want to spend some extra effort to see how he suddenly got so good.
At least now such clean riders as Ulrich, Zulle, and Beloki will be able to claim to be Tour winners!
Hooray for cycling and the USADA.
According a dutch newspaper (Telegraaf), Hincapie, Leipheimer, Vande Velde, Zabriskie have testimonied about Lance’s doping.
They would have got a small sentence for their help.
http://www.telegraaf.nl/telesport/tour-de-france-2012/12494479/___Bizarre_deal_in_zaak-Armstrong___.html
All those named either deny or have no comment. Travesty Tygart denies as well. We’ll have to see how it pans out. FWLIW, I don’t have any doubt LA doped and doped well. I just don’t find Jean C’s anecdotal evidence and circular logic persuasive. Also don’t much care that (if?) LA doped or not. Trying to figure out who was clean or doped in that era is a fool’s errand. Even if you could figure it out with some certainty, it wouldn’t matter. Simplistically dropping down the order to eliminate the known dopers doesn’t come close to addressing how the race(s) would have panned out had they not been there.
The riders should not be the primary target of blame anyway. Blame is mis-placed. UCI and IOC/WADA should take most of the blame for their lack of professionalism in allowing such a climate to come into being. They should be further embarrassed by their idiotic tactics utilized to attempt to “clean things up” and should be begging forgiveness from the riders, teams, race organizers, sponsors and fans for the farcical mess they have created.
And remember folks, if you watch the olympics later this summer, you’ll be treated to a variety of Nazi authored pageantry gleefully adopted by the IOC. Can you say “Cha Ching”?
Some interesting reading on the bio passport process:
Ashenden: Understanding USADA’s Armstrong charges
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/07/news/ashenden-understanding-usadas-armstrong-charges_227833
It seems Ashenden is not exactly unbiased, but it does give interesting insight into the process behind the scenes.
Mike, either everything I know about the bio passport is wrong (not out of the question), or Ashenden is full of … er … beans.
My read of Ashenden boils down to how is it that there could be something wrong with Armstrong’s 2009 and 2010 blood values when he didn’t test positive at the time under the biological passport. Ashenden’s answer 1 is that these tests undergo an initial screen, and the screeners are not always good at picking up which passport values warrant further scrutiny. Only when the test results are given to the panel of scientists do we have an accurate determination of what is what. Based on what I know, this is nonsense. The bio passport initial screen is not a matter of some lab tech eyeballing test results — it is a 100% objective screen based on upper and lower limit numbers computed from earlier test results. While the computation may be highly sophisticated, the screeners know the upper and lower limits applicable to each blood marker measured, and knowing these limits it’s a simple matter to see if the test results should go to the panel of scientists. It is the panel of scientists that have the power to review the results subjectively, to see if there’s a good excuse why an athlete’s numbers fall outside of the objective limits established under the passport.
If you want to get a more detailed description of this, go here: http://bit.ly/Nckr6M. Please review the comments and responses (some of which I wrote). I wanted to get clear on this stuff, and I think I helped get the scientists to explain the passport about as thoroughly and accurately as you’ll find anywhere. The take-away point is this: assuming that Armstrong’s passport values were never flagged, that means that Armstrong’s value were not positive. Period.
There’s a second point Ashenden is trying to make, even though he’s not making it clearly, and it has to do with statistics. If you’re trying to use the bio passport as your sole proof of doping, then the blood markers have to point to doping with a high degree of certainty (99.9%, or so I’m told). But if you have other evidence of doping, then arguably the bio passport might provide persuasive evidence even if it doesn’t add up to 99.9%. Think about it this way: let’s say that they found Mr. X’s DNA at the murder scene, and identified the DNA with such high confidence that it could belong only to Mr. X or 9 other people on Earth. You might say, that’s not very good proof — there’s something like a 90% chance that Mr. X is not the murderer. But what if Mr. X was seen at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder … and Mr. X had a motive to kill the victim … the corroborating evidence reduces that 90% chance of error.
I think this is Ashenden’s point, same as I think this was his point when he tried to testify against Contador. Let’s say that Armstrong’s bio passport numbers indicate a 75% likelihood that he doped … but that USADA comes up with two witnesses willing to testify that they saw Armstrong dope. Maybe that 75% likelihood might be part of a good case against Armstrong.
Thing is, I highly doubt that the studies have been done to accurately measure levels of bio passport confidence below the 99.9% that (I think) is the level established and accepted for the passport. The math and science needed to establish these confidence levels is NOT trivial.
Larry, I thought it was a very interesting read, that’s for sure! Amazingly enough, it made me think of where I work, and how things operate. I happen to work for a State agency, in info security of all things ( you might see now why chain of custody, evidence gathering, and erased harddrives are of real interest to me!). We have very specific policies and rules regarding employee behavior. However, those policies/rules rarely get applied in any consistent manner – situational ethics is the label I most often come back to. Maybe I jumped to the wrong conclusions, but that seemed to me what Ashenden was describing. Technically it might not be a “positive”, but when they decided to factor in an athletes racing schedule and/or other factors and opinions, it suddenly warranted more scrutiny or became a “positive”. That whole subjective thing reminded me of how the rules get applied/not applied based on someones subjective input where I work…Pseudo government entities can be really good at screwing things up. Only the actual government is better!
I really enjoy all the differing viewpoints and opinions here – there is always some new aspect of a situation to consider and things to learn.
Sad day for athletes when the Chewbacca Defense doesn’t work anymore.
http://liveupdateguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Armstrong-TRO-dismissal.pdf
Seems to me that Lance’s legal should have seen that dismissal coming and tailored their submission to avoid what happened. Or maybe it’s like what the judge said. This was a ploy for public consumption and not a serious filing. Of course, if they try again, they’d better make sure to have their i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
The amended complaint has been filed. I think it’s a pretty good complaint, legal-wise. It’s a legitimate question, exactly how far can USADA reach, beyond the role we all understand as doping prosecutor (1) when an athlete fails a doping test, and (2) for sports that have signed up with them or WADA. It’s my quick read of the rules that the decision to go after Armstrong (or to delegate that authority to USADA) has to be made by UCI.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99740088/Lance-Armstrong-Amended-Complaint
The first filing did not conform to the standards of the court where it was filed. (Each court specifies length of filing, the format……) The Judge could have dismissed it with comment or without. He chose with.
Not sure why the LA legal team chose not to conform to the filing requirements? I can’t picture it being an oversight and it usually pisses the Judge off.
I have not read the amended complaint cited by Larry, but would bet the house it conforms.
It’s splitting hairs, but I think UCI has to bounce it to USA Cycling. Then USA Cycling delegates it to USADA.
The delegating makes sense to me. (not the rubber stamping part, but the illusion of the conflict of interest part) FWLIW, I don’t at all like LA or support the guy, but this is clearly over reaching. If USADA really has this kind of authority, every athlete under their umbrella who makes a living from their sport should think twice about an alternate profession. YMMV.
Jeff, you’ve put your finger on why the Armstrong court case is so interesting to me. We could pretty much write the script for what would take place in arbitration, and while the details might be juicy, it’s not likely that the arbitration would be public, so we’d learn only what would eventually be disclosed in the arbitration decision.
The court case is more interesting, because hopefully we’ll learn then the scope of USADA’s independent power to bring actions against athletes. I would have assumed that any such power would have to be delegated to USADA by a WADA-signatory national or international sports federation. I mean, USADA could not decide to bring a case against a baseball player like Roger Clemens to strip him of his Cy Young awards just because, you know, they are USADA. Right?
Not to get too cynical, but if Armstrong proves that USADA is acting outside of its scope of authority, we can assume that WADA will change its code to give anti-doping organizations the power to bring these cases in the future.