Timing Is Everything, Again

Late last week came word that the USADA vs. Floyd Landis arbitrations had finally, formally been closed. Almost four months after the actual hearings took place last May at the Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that the hearings actually closed on Thursday, which would mean the decision would be due on September 23rd, or next Sunday, which is one day later than I’d previously reported.

Assuming the later date is correct, an announcement on the 23rd presents some interesting wrinkles in terms of timing. First, for those who have been following the final Grand Tour of the season, that is the day that the Vuelta a Espana ends in Madrid. Regardless of what the decision is, I’m sure that Unipublic, the organizers of the Vuelta, would not want to see their race overshadowed by the announcement. If it comes early enough in the day, it could well pour a certain amount of rain on their parade. Given the time difference between North America and Madrid, the ruling would have to come pretty early in the day for it to have an impact.

Or, if the ruling came on Saturday, just in time to hit the print and broadcast media’s major cycles, it could have an impact on Vuelta coverage. The announcement would need to be made by late afternoon, Eastern Time, for it to have an early Sunday impact in Europe. And it would need to come before midnight Eastern to have a major impact in the US, as the East Coast daily papers (the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, etc.) would be putting out their editions by that point.

If the ruling came early enough, it could run on either the front page or the front of the sports section, as those are the last parts of the Sunday paper to get printed. But if the ruling is announced after the papers pass their deadlines, it won’t make a big splash, as it will already be a follow-up story by the time they can get it into print. Certainly, the broadcast media can pick up the story and run with it, but it will still have less of an impact if it hits in a later news cycle than earlier in the day.

Which brings me to another aspect of timing to a Sunday ruling that would have an impact on how the announcement gets covered. Sunday would be a day that the ruling could make a splash — if it were announced early enough on Saturday to hit the major news cycles. But it’s also a day where the story could get effectively buried, if the announcement comes late in the day. Sunday papers have the biggest circulation of any day, with the potential for more readers to see what happened.

The Sunday morning news and commentary shows could have an impact, too. But only if the story comes out early enough that they can actually cover it, which again means Saturday in all actuality. Sunday sports shows could carry at least a newsflash, if the announcement came out in time. By later in the afternoon or early evening, however, the story would miss the major network newscasts, leaving the only immediate coverage to networks like CNN, whose headline news channel is no longer even all headline news, all the time.

By getting the announcement out late in the day, it will receive less coverage than if it comes out early. By getting it out on a Sunday, they will miss the big splash of the early Sunday media coverage (Sunday morning papers, news shows, etc.).

So why think about the timing at all? Because it determines just how much people will know about the result. If you want lots of people to know something, you try to time your announcements for the maximum impact in the media. If you want the story to go by with less notice, you try to time the announcements for when media coverage will be minimal.

Sunday would be a good time for an announcement of a decision in Landis’ favor, from the point of view of minimizing the impact. A decision in his favor could launch a firestorm in the media, if it hit at the right moment, as it could be viewed as be a major blow to the anti-doping authorities. Some news organizations might actually go back, revisit the case, and try to explain where the ADAs went wrong on Landis. Some stories might focus on the reasons cited by the arbitrators for overturning the case, and other articles would mention the inevitable appeal by USADA, the UCI or WADA.

On the other hand, a decision against Landis won’t launch the same kind of furor. Many pundits, sports reporters, and others in the media (at least judging by their commentary and coverage) have assumed Landis is guilty. A ruling confirming that opinion would generate a few days of coverage, at most, before fading into the background for a while. Sure, a possible appeal by the Landis side would get a mention, but it wouldn’t be a huge story, and the tone of the coverage would change to being more openly hostile to the Landis defense. As the appeal wends its way through the CAS system, only an occasional article might appear.

Of course, the arbitrators could surprise us all and release their ruling before then. But my hunch is they’ll wait until the last possible moment, so they can make certain all their i’s are dotted and their t’s crossed. And who knows exactly what the meaning of “10 days” is?

As Reuters is reporting this morning, the decision might not come until next Monday. From The Guardian:

“The arbitration panel ended its deliberations three days ago. They have 10 days to announce their decision so it will be known by next Monday at the latest,” Kellie Power, marketing manager with Landis’s lawyers Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher told Reuters on Monday.

My biggest hope is that the arbitrators pay attention to the law, the rules, the lab procedures and the scientific issues of the case, and that they not pay attention to such issues as timing the announcement for a desired impact. But, they are beholden to WADA to a certain extent, and if they wish to keep working on anti-doping cases, they may be all too human and wish to minimize any damage their ruling might bring.

Taking A Big Step Backward

Reader “just bitch slap me please” points out in a comment that the UCI’s Pat McQuaid is backtracking on his opinion about what a proper ban for a first-time doping offense should be. According to the BBC, McQuaid now supports lifetime bans for those found guilty of a first offense.

After another summer of failed tests and allegations, professional cycling is under pressure to lift its drugs ban from two years to life.

“I would certainly be in favour of doing that,” Pat McQuaid, the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), told BBC1’s Inside Sport.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is a zero-tolerance policy.”

Given the current “strict liability” policy, under McQuaid’s new point of view, a rider could receive a lifetime ban for inadvertently ingesting a banned substance, as skier Alain Baxter did at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. While the system supposedly allows arbitrators a certain amount of discretion in the penalties imposed, as the L.A. Times’ Michael Hiltzik reported last December, not all panels have felt they had the flexibility to exercise any discretion.

Given the current controversies around some of the tests, themselves, a lifetime ban for a first offense is too extreme. Yes, there is doping going on in cycling. At times it appears rampant, especially due to the media coverage. How often do you hear the words “and he won clean” after a rider scores a victory in a bike race? Unless the rider in question is Bradley Wiggins, not very often. (And how sad is it that riders should almost automatically be suspected of doping if they win?)

How many riders are doping? No one really knows, for certain. Some argue that it’s most. Some argue it’s only a few. Somewhere in between is the truth. But exactly where, we don’t know.

But until the testing is better and more accurate, and until the adjudication system allows riders to truly defend themselves, lifetime bans is the wrong way to go. As “just bitch slap me please” noted:

For this to work, they just have to scrap their testing modes and adopt double blind, verifiable testing. To institute a lifetime ban because the the results obtained from the joke of a system we have now would be a criminal injustice.

Exactly.

Hincapie Takes Inaugural Tour of Missouri

George Hincapie stood on the podium yesterday in downtown St. Louis as the first overall winner of the Tour of Missouri. This week’s racing through my home state was the last appearance by the Discovery Channel cycling team in an American race, because they will be disbanding at the end of the season. A Discovery win is a good way to bow out. For Hincapie, the long-time member of Discovery and its previous incarnations, it’s a welcome victory. Cuban-born Toyota-United rider Ivan Dominguez took his second stage win of the race yesterday.