Two key points here, it seems to me. Python suggests this was probably an A sample that was covered up, so of course processing would never get to the AAF stage. Rata notes that determining whether an EPO test is positive is very subjective—it’s arguably as much art as science. And back then, when the urine test was in its infancy, even more so.
But consider Rata’s “wobble” scenario a little more closely. How and why did LA get notified in the first place? It seems to me he only would have been notified if the sample had been judged positive. It might have been a borderline positive, a close thing, but at the end of the day, a sample has to be determined positive or negative. The lab doesn’t determine a “not sure” (unless the test was messed up a la Heras). At least, that’s the way it works now.
So I assume it was determined a positive, someone decoded the number, and at that point someone knew it was LA’s sample. I can't imagine getting to the decoding stage if the sample was not determined a genuine positive. I’m not sure who knows what at this stage—maybe Python can help here—but it seems to me that the person who first knows the identity of the rider would not know anything other than the sample was positive. IOW, s/he would not know if it was a borderline positive, a barely positive, or whatever. Only that word came from the lab that it was positive.
This is important, it seems to me, because it implies that when LA was invited to have a meeting with the UCI, the subject of the meeting could not have been “we are not sure if this sample is positive or negative”. It had to be simply “this sample is positive”. Period. Maybe the UCI official, wanting to get LA off, make a deal with him, whatever the motivation was, looked at the data, talked to the lab, learned that the positive was borderline, and so was able to rationalize in his own mind that it was not a positive. I can easily see that happening. But it’s pretty clear the meeting never would have occurred if it hadn’t been a genuine positive--one that would have nailed any other rider--and if LA had not been involved.
Incidentally, slightly off topic, but what does it say about LA that he would tell Tyler it was “taken care of”? More and more, I think of master criminals who aren’t satisfied with getting away with murder (literally), but have to brag about it, have to tell others about it. They want the world to know how smart they are. You would think if you got away with something like this, the last thing in the world you would want to do is bring others into the secret. Yet apparently LA did.
I don’t think I appreciated until Tyler’s testimony just what an iron grip omerta had/has on riders. LA has known for years that many riders could implicate him, that he had an extremely damaging secret that was in fact well known to maybe a dozen or more other people, yet he not only did not seem worried at all about that, but even added to the evidence they could implicate him on. Presumably it would have been hard to dope without other team members knowing about it. But he didn’t have to tell anyone about this meeting.
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