icefire said:
I do believe sport must be clean and cheaters must be banned from playing the game. But most discussions regarding this issue tend to mix aspects of sports rules and state law in a dangerous way.
If I kick someone on the street and break his leg, I can be taken to court. If I do that playing a football competition, I can just be banned from playing a few matches, but cannot be taken to court. There is a clear separation between sport and state in this case.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for doping. I can consume cocaine or any other drug and I cannot be taken to court for that (at least in my country). I'm free to harm myself. However, I cannot sell cocaine, and I cannot keep at home 1 kg of cocaine claiming that is for my own use. I'm not free to harm others' health.
If the use of drugs in sport is against the sport rules, it must be prosecuted at the expense of the sports authorities (federations, Olympic committee) and competition organisers. I don't want taxpayer money being spent on this. And I don't want Congress and Government (particularly in a democratic country) surrender to the demands of private organisations such as sport federations or the Olympic Committee to enact laws on the subject and treat cheaters like criminals.
That being said, OP was a public case against a doctor for bad medical practices. He was just accused of knowingly harming the health of others. Form the point of view of the law, his patients were victims even if they knew what they were doing (or intending to do), and their identities should have never been published.
Unfortunately, the Spanish Justice did a very bad job allowing the leak of some identities (only cyclists, as some have said) and the scandal was served.
In the Spring of 2008, the Spanish Government asked all sport federations whose teams or athletes had not qualified for the Beijing Olympics to renew their governing bodies (following an agreement between the Government and the Olympic sports federations) to prepare as soon as possible for the next Olympic cycle. This included the football federation, but UEFA told the Government that if elections for president of the federation were forced the national football team would be banned from the Eurocup. If you remember the result of Eurocup 2008 you guess what was the decision.
I'm sorry, but if sports authorities think they are beyond common law and Government agreements their activities should be banned. They should run their private games and enforce their private rules with their private resources. And they should be sued if they don't abide by the state's laws.
I'm not defending cheaters. I'm defending a clear separation between sport and state and the submission of sport to state's law. Under such premises, if CONI has blood samples from OP, CONI should be sued for the illegal obtention of those samples. Yes, I know, it would be easier to sue the Vatican Church for whatever.
And if CONI, UCI or WADA want to catch Valv.piti or any other cheater, send the vampires to wherever he is every day, pay the vampires with your own money and do not involve the Police or the state's Justice in your private game. And do not complain because the Government and the state's Justice does not help you.
I think frankly you are mixing an Orwelian horror, subtle regime take-over of the LAW, with simple bad legal setup and political decision making on the part of Spain, which, in the OP case in general and in the Valv-Piti (vs, Basso) case in particular, has led to two measures being applied to the same weight within a profession that trancends international juristictions. Not fair.
Or at least if Spain is going to have its own setup and Italy (but also France, Germany, Begium, etc.) theirs, then each rider should be held accountable according to the laws of those individual states in which he practices his profession. In other words, ok, Spain could not prosecute it's riders for something that in Italy was condemnable under the law because in Spain it was not? So Spain should have faught just as hard to allow Basso to have raced on its soil, as it has done to clear its star from the "nefarious" conduct of a CONI that had the gall to persue an investigation which led to irrefutable proof that Valverde was doping with Fuentes.
Nonesense right? Of course it is, but it is even more absurd that Spain has not demonstrated the
political will to make retroactive its new doping law policy and so make what should have been naturally applicable to the OP case (because it is against the rules of the athlete's professions, and because a few have in their countries taken the fall for many).
This is what this boils down to
political will, but Spain of course, in adition to the UCI, have demostrated no such political will, because both contrary to the natioanl image and against the economic interests of the sporting establishments.
That's what is so sickening about the entire OP affair: that just a few have had to pay for the sins of many and that Spain and the UCI are
politically essentially covering-up what could be the most sensational doping scandal in the history of sport. These modern State and governing aparatuses are thus protecting the mere economic interests of the the behind the scenes powers that be and, consequently, the omertà which needs to be destroyed if ever cleaner sport is to come about.
So I think your concerns about the LAW are off base, when it is really a political issue and not a legal one. Becuase the momment OP came out, Spain did get around to changing the law because of internal and international pressures given how rediculous the old legal setup was. But that has not led to real justice being done, that is all (not just some) of the guilty being fairly punished, for this scandalous and sickening political reason.
And many a Spainsh editorial in newspapers such as El Pais have said as much with thoughts like: "See there, Italy has the spine to go after its rule breeching athletes, but we in Spain, what do we get - political opposition to our athlete's being punished so as to protect the omertà that covers-up the ill-doers in our sport."
Simple justice for the guilty, that's all. Not the political and legal posturing that this case highlights in regards to how the corruption caused by a conflict of interests is really at the basis of the culture of professional sport in the modern age.
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