The Hitch said:
I was not making a direct comparison between the Tyson Gay and Team Sky doping cases but between your willingness to accept an argument based on common sense depending on when it suits you.
you were comparing the first to make a point on the second - that first comparison doesn't hold up, as previously shown.
You absolutely refuse to.listen anyone point out what parts of skys story don't make sense saying it's evidence or nothing. But in the gay case, you had no problem divorcing entirely from that principle and ignoring the evidence angle in favour of - it doesn't make sense.
But if you want to compare the cases I can do that too.
Before there was evidence you argued Gay was clean, because there was no evidence.
That's bollix. I didn't argue anything of the sort.
I argued that I would be surprised (note the word) if Gay deliberately doped for a number of reasons, none of them specifically because he had never tested positive - after all, I never defended Powell at the time, as far as I recall, and he had never tested positive at the time either.
The view on Gay was not based on lack of positives; it was based primarily on evidence; records of efforts he had made to give some evidential meat to his own claims of being clean over and above that demanded by IAAF, with more circumstantial stuff about his back history, palmares.
I did argue that I find it hard to see how a clinical and experienced doper who had evaded the authorities and anti-doping with success for a decade while winning champs and running records would one day be so careless as to go positive not just once, but a whole bunch of times around the national champs for common garden variety testosterone. None of the Balco kids were caught by such carelessness.
Looking on the facts of his positive result, particularly the involvement of an anti-aging quack, and how Gay reacted to it (compare his reaction, for example, to VCB, Powell and Simpson), I'm pretty content with that first analysis. Lauryn Williams blog on the issue backs that analysis up, not least because she avoided said quack, so ain't in trouble, and didn't go to bat explicitly for Gay while clearly referring to him.
You claimed objectivity by saying that if the evidence does come out, you will turn on him. It was very easy to say that at the time of course.
Then the evidence came. The evidence said Gay doped, but you ignored it, and still you argued he was clean.
I've publically called, from the start, despite the clear evidence that Gay was stupid and reckless, rather than malign in intent, and his immediate mea culpa (again, compare Powell and Simpson) for a long ban. Hardly ignoring anything.
He doped. It may have been as a result of recklessness rather than malign intent - that's certainly where the evidence actually points whether you like it or not - but as fas as I'm concerned recklessness isn't a defence. You're well paid not to be reckless.
I have in fact been a hell of a lot more consistent on these issues than others round here.
So here we are with sky. You say Sky are clean because there is no evidence. You claim objectivity by saying that if the evidence does come out, you will turn on them. Well it's very easy to claim that now of course. But judging by the previous example, I am not so sure.
Please find me any link here where I have declared Sky are clean. Take your time.
In fact, my only public pronouncement on the issue, even as opinion, to Hog as memory serves, was to admit I genuinly didn't know, and was finding it hard to come to a conclusion one way or the other for lack of data.
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