Re:
hazaran said:
Looks like a deliberate delay by the UCI. They have their own "anti doping tribunal" (remember, the kangaroo court instituted by Crookson) delay it until after the Giro so that there are no bad headlines, and certainly nothing during the Giro.
I agree with you that they don't want to announce any ban during the Giro. But iFroome were banned before the Giro, and couldn't ride it, why would the headlines be worse than if he were banned after the Giro, particularly if he won? The latter scenario would certainly be worse if the ban were back-dated and he was stripped of the Giro results. Even if the ban were proactive, which it very likely could be, it would still look bad for someone to be banned right after riding a GT for an offense that occurred before that GT.
As Lappartient said, Froome has good lawyers and a lot of resources. If he's pushing some wild theory to explain his positive, that could take a long time. And given that Froome has said on the record that he thinks any ban will be proactive, of course he perceives it's to his advantage to delay the decision until after the Giro. He would probably like to delay the decision till after the Tour, too, but given where the case seems to be now, that would be very hard to do without his being held responsible for the delay, and possibly getting a worse penalty because of that.
The really bad publicity, it seems to me, is slipping under the radar. Lappartient used the term ADRV. Someone with an ADRV is not supposed to be able to ride till the case is settled. Technically, Froome can ride, because the Tribunal has to make the final decision, but make no mistake. If LADS has proposed a ban, the Tribunal is basically a court of appeal. By the spirit if not the letter of the rules, Froome's case has progressed beyond an AAF--certainly beyond the kind of AAF that doesn't mandate a suspension.
This goes back to the rationale for specified substances. Why is someone who tests over the limit for sablutamol allowed to keep racing? Because it's recognized that there is a greater likelihood for an innocent explanation than for non-specified substances. IOW, the probability of the AAF becoming an ADRV is a little lower. But now that LADS has apparently declared that it is an ADRV, that rationale clearly no longer applies. The odds that Froome will be banned have gone up. By the intent of the rules, he should not be allowed to ride at this point.
What they don't realize or seem to willingly accept is that if they delay a decision till the time between Giro and Tour, Froome will obviously appeal that to the CAS (the real court) and those proceedings are guaranteed to take longer than the Tour. So he gets to ride/win both.
No. If Froome is banned between the Giro and the Tour, the ban goes into effect immediately. So assuming it is proactive--or if it's back-dated for a year or more--he can't ride the Tour while the case is being appealed to CAS.
Meanwhile, Lappartient still can't come out and say whether there was an Acceptance of Consequences letter which Froome rejected. Using the term ADRV certainly strongly suggests there was, but it would be nice to have clarification. My guess is that a hearing, if there is one, has been scheduled shortly after the Giro. It's also possible, though, that the hearing could take place right before the Giro. There are usually several weeks or more between the hearing and the decision, so in that case the decision would still come after the Giro.
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