One important aspect of this case is that the science is not complex (very different from Floyd and Tyler). It’s not that hard to explain how the decision went. It was between the likelihood of eating contaminated meat and the likelihood of transfusing. The panel clearly accepted the notion that contaminated meat in Spain is exceedingly rare—that while there may be ranchers trying to circumvent the rules, there is no hard evidence that they do so frequently enough to make it probable that Bert ate contaminated meat. I have to believe that this was the key stubborn fact that Bert’s lawyers simply could not sweep under the rug. As I noted before, to argue against this is to imply that Spanish meat is not as safe as advertised, and that opens up its own political can of worms.
The transfusion scenario, as we discussed, also has problems—Bert had to take a lot of CB and not test positive for it, had to withdraw blood and separate cells and plasma, store the latter in a DEHP-free container, and transfuse them separately during the Tour. Taken altogether, that does not seem highly likely, either. But there is no question that it could be done as hypothesized; the possibility did not seem astronomically low, as the raw meat stats indicate contamination is. In a nutshell, I think this must have been the arbs reasoning.
I think the backdated sentence was the most fair under the circumstances. As I noted on the other thread, if Bert had been allowed to keep 2011 results, when he returned to racing would depend on when CAS announced the decision. All these delays would mean a correspondingly longer delay in returning to racing. By backdating and in effect extending his ban throughout 2011, this was all avoided. It also means that fans will have seen Bert riding throughout all banned period except this year till the Vuelta. Under the circumstances, this was about as good as he could get.
Bert also got another break, IMO. It's very hard to convict him of CB without also convicting him of blood doping--IOW, two violations, not one. If you believe he doped, he must have transfused as well as taken CB. We discussed on the other thread the different standards of evidence that apply to the two, but the bottom line, for me, is that contamination is so unlikely that to conclude he took CB and transfused almost definitely means to believe the evidence for both is well within the range for a conventional doping sanction (not just balance of probabilities). I don't think anyone wanted to see Bert go down that hard, but that decision could have been justified by the same logic that got him the two year ban.
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