I think a lot of bickering can be defused if we understand that there are different interests among the posters. Python’s main interest is what will CAS actually decide? From this point of view, he is correct that all that matters is that Lausanne was negative and WADA accepted it. The fact that Bert might actually have tested positive for CB on that day with a more sensitive test is completely irrelevant to the outcome of this case. This is consistent with his generally hard-nosed approach: let’s forget all the what-if speculation, and focus on reality, what outcomes are actually possible.
For those who do want to speculate, though, a while back upthread, I provided some estimates of how far back in time (before July 21, 2010) Bert could have taken CB in PE doses, such that he a) avoided a positive while tested after certain Tour stages; b) tested below the Lausanne limit; and c) tested positive in Cologne for July 21.FWIW, I came to the conclusion that it was not impossible that he took a large dose of CB at some earlier time, and that was the source of his positive at Cologne, but quite unlikely.
Because it's suddenly less possible that they all transfused and used clen earlier than ate contaminated meat? Why? I don't know if I agree with that kind of math. Then they all had to eat contaminated meat (which is not more likely, if chances are that small), from tissue that was identically contaminated. I'm not sure at all that's more likely than being on the same doping program (especially being team mates)...
No, you misunderstood me. The point I was making is that if there is a very small probability of something happening to any one individual, the probability of it happening to one individual in a large group is greater. For example—as was discussed at length in another forum during the Landis case--while the odds of a single rider being a false positive for testosterone might be, say, one in a thousand, the odds of one rider in a group of 50-100 riders, all tested, being a false positive, might be, say, one in a hundred. (Or to make it even simpler, while the odds of killing yourself in Russian roulette are one in six, if you pull the trigger more than once, your odds go up). In the same way, though the odds of Bert eating contaminated meat are, say, one in seventeen thousand, if 50-100 riders ate meat in different areas of Spain, the odds of just one of them testing positive would be, maybe, one in a thousand or better.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in February 2011 over 16.000 kg of illegal meat was caught in Castilla Y Leon. But how much of that meat normally would have been tested? I'm afraid zero to nothing...
In the link you furnished for this story, the word “clenbuterol” is never mentioned. In fact, there is no mention that the meat was tainted, only that it was illegal, apparently there was an attempt to avoid inspection. This is known to happen sometimes, but it doesn’t prove that that meat was actually contaminated. There are many laws and rules governing the meat industry, including for example sanitation of the slaughter area to avoid bacterial contamination, and humane treatment of animals, and we don’t know which of these laws the perps were trying to dodge. AFAIK, nothing more on this seizure is available, almost a year later. I think if it had been shown to be contaminated with CB, a story would have appeared somewhere, as for example occurred with Tenerife.
What I do know is that in 2008-09, there were 19,000 tests conducted on meat samples in Spain, with zero positives. In 2010, more than 14,000 tests, zero positives. Now maybe a significant amount of meat is avoiding controls, but an occasional story of a seizure doesn’t establish that fact. It does provide another reason, though, for testing of the population to evaluate this possibility.
You are correct that the figures for all of Spain do not necessarily accurately portray the situation in some small area within that country. The incidence of CB in some locality might be much higher. But that doesn’t help Bert unless it can be shown that the incidence is higher in the area where his meat came from. Localities with a contamination level much higher than the country-wide average are by definition rare. So while meat in such an area has a higher probability of being contaminated, the probability of someone at random actually being in that area is much lower. And in an extreme case, where the locale is so tiny that it doesn’t receive any of the more ten thousand nationwide tests, the probability of someone eating meat from that area are miniscule, around one in ten thousand.
Bert has been unable to show that the meat he ate came from such an area. The fact that the brother of a rancher who was busted once in the past might have been the source of his meat doesn’t say much.
separation doesn't make lot of sense these days. You would only create extra problems (plasma/saline storage/transportation and passport-risks during a certain time frame
On the contrary, it avoids the need for withdrawal-transfusion cycles during the season, which are very difficult to fit in with a racing schedule. And as I explained before, freeze-drying greatly reduces the storage/transportation problems. Would you have trouble smuggling a little bag of peanuts somewhere? Pretty easy to hide, isn’t it?
) that said, i’m firmly in favour of all sorts of ‘what ifs’ - there simply can not be a healthy nor productive scientific discussion without a thorough threshing out of different possibilities, however speculative. 
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