What a mess.
Months later and all it adds up to that everyone who had a theory or a conspiracy going in has been given enough cause to be even more "ever so totally convinced" that they were right, even if some of the theories in this thread are diametrically opposed.
Meanwhile, actual facts on the ground are still very thin. We are still speculating about the procedure -or trying to figure out- the actual rules that affect the case, who did what when, the actual defence, even the content actual findings, advice, etc.
I find it nigh impossible to come to any opinion how much justice is done here. From both an employment law pov, cycling rules pov and a doping pov. [I fear that my suspicions about the latter are on slightly firmer ground though, but ultimately speculative to a large degree too].
If the blood passport is used by Contador as a defence, that pretty much buries the usefulness of that program. Whoever takes this to arbitration would have to argue that complying dots don't mean a clean rider, but odd dots do suggest a doper. So "over the year" it really means nada, despite the fanfare with which it is paraded about. A lot of costs for not much (although I do credit it -my impression- that it has capped excessive doping to some extent).
if it is true that the UCI had expert papers that eliminated all but a contaminated steak and that that didn't make it to the defense team, wow. Either someone completely messed up due process, or was trying to withhold crucial defence, assuming that the papers that were passed on kept a positive as a result of blood doping firmly on the table as the only realistic option here. Either way is bad bad bad.
if it is true that clen (and other zero tolerance substances) is actually present in trace amounts that can give genuine innocent folk positives as suggested by lab directors, and WADA and the UCI is still not adjusting it rules to match the level of detection now possible, or the ad-hoc testing environment, or addresses the fact that some people are tested to much tighter controls than others, and the victory baton can be passed onto someone who might well have failed the same level of tests, or that the rules itself might well breach EU employment law...... phhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I will await the exact facts on what "got him off the hook" (for now). But it sure looks like Contador got away with fiddling at the margins (I suspect). And he would have stayed well within the margins if not for all but one giant self-inflicted ****-up.
That doesn't affect my conviction that the standards for "positives" should be set at a level that makes false positives impossible. And that everyone is tested to the standards. And that there should be a reasonable chance that a doper is nailed to start with, rather than this incidental scape-goating.
Zero-tolerance rules, when we can now peek at individual atoms, will also need to be brought into the 21st century. Pronto.
I am still not clear if the clen tests on cattle is done to the same standard that is applied to Contador (I doubt it). So 20,000 clean tests might not be what it seems at all. Even if clen isn't applied directly to cattle, it might well have been applied and mixed up into the stuff that they get fed, as god knows what actually happens in the Hakuna Matata food circle of intense farming life these days.
[Even if this might well be just a side note in this sage] We can only have rules that make sense for the environment that we live in. I have lost all confidence that the current rules match that criteria.
Anyhoo. Another moment when not a lot of parties look good. They all came out with fingers burnt and black marks against them, I think. Not a good day for the sport, whichever way you turn it. I just hope lessons are learned and something constructive will come out of it. I suspect that will be a lot less than needed, given past experiences with "watershed" doping moments in cycling.
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