He doesn't have to have lots of CB in his system, how much Clen would you have to take to help lose a Kilo or 2? How much of that would show up in a test?
A typical dose would probably be 50-100 ug, daily for a week or two. We discussed transfusion vs. contamination thoroughly here before. Transfusion of blood following a single dose that large could account for Bert’s urine level, and if he took CB daily for several days or a week, a lesser amount would do it.
Remember the positive tests were from Cologne lab which can find smaller traces than some other laboratory's.
Yes I noted that in my original post. Still would think a rider would be more careful. But it’s probably always a mistake to overestimate how careful an athlete will be in avoiding a positive.
The 26th August was the date accepted by RFEC in their resolution.
Was that date in the RFEC report as the beginning of the suspension? I missed that, my bad.
He is currently not suspended so I am not sure where you are getting your scenario's from. If he is suspended then I would expect the 5 and a half months already served (Aug'10- Feb'11) to be taken off.
No he is not currently suspended, but if he is banned they could as noted upthread begin the ban on the date the samples tested positive, which would mean he is in effect banned now. Under this scenario he would lose all his 2011 results. I don’t see how he could lose those results unless the ban extended through the 2011 season, which means it would end (2 year) sometime next summer.
The alternative would be to begin two years minus the five and a half months after CAS announces the decision, but then wouldn’t Bert be allowed to keep the 2011 results? Are you seriously suggesting this? Not that I know, but I would have thought the 2011 results would have to go.
No one is going to prove a transfusion. WADA will only try to show that a transfusion is more likely than contamination, presumably by having Ashenden testify about Contador's bio passport values.
Yes and no. You’re right that no one is going to prove a transfusion slam-dunk, 100%. But the same can be said about CB, no one is going to prove slam dunk that it wasn’t meat contamination. The point is that whatever preponderance of evidence allows one to conclude it was not contaminated meat is also going to allow one to conclude that it was transfusion. And if that evidence is good enough to sanction him for CB, it is also good enough to sanction him for transfusion.
Both sides have painted themselves into this corner. The two scenarios are joined at the hip now. You can’t reasonably conclude that Bert did not eat contaminated meat without also reasonably concluding that he transfused. This was spelled out in the RFEC decision.
If the process allows it, Ashenden could be raked over the coals by forcing him to answer questions about other people's data. If you hand him six non-extreme cases, can he reliably pick out the one belonging to a person who had a small transfusion? How confident can he be about small variations that could be natural? What type of false positive rate does his opinion have? Has the bio passport committe even studied the issue of false positives with middle of the road profiles? The defense should be looking to back him into a corner and force an admission that in borderline cases his opinion is weakly supported by research and not much more than a guess.
Ashenden himself has published papers, which I linked here earlier, concluding that you can’t use the passport to establish blood doping. He would be a good witness to demolish Bert’s claim (made before RFEC) that his passport rules out blood doping. IOW, that the passport cannot be used to prove a negative. If he does try to go further, and suggest that Bert’s passport does suggest blood doping, I agree he will have a tough time—unless he has access to some very unusual numbers. But he really shouldn’t have to do that. Again, it’s up to Bert to prove he didn’t transfuse.
I would anticipate Contadors defense to include dismissing or showing how unlikely it is to have clenbuterol in your system through microdose or from an infusion. Therefore leaving the only possibility as food contamination.
Having experts lined up to show that possibility is a prudent move by WADA.
Bert will lose on that argument. Transfusion can indeed account for the amount of CB in his system. Thoroughly discussed here before.
The only possibility helping him I see here is evidence that CB is unstable when stored in blood. I have tried very hard to find studies of this, but the closest I have seen are studies showing it is stable in refrigerated tissues like liver. It would be a very easy thing to test, and Bert should have done this, because if the results were negative—i.e., if CB turned out to be quite stable in refrigerated blood, as it most likely is—it wouldn’t add to the evidence he was guilty (unlike, for example, a positive hair test, which would really hurt him). IOW, a nothing to lose move.
Careful - Cologne tested over 13,000 samples in 2010.
If traces that small were in the general sporting population there would have been an enormous increase in positives.
They did? For CB? Or how many for CB? I would be very interested to see those data. Do you have a link?
I’m certainly no expert on this but I’m led to believe from a few medical research acquaintances that DEHP can enter the body through a number of other sources other than blood bags. I’m sure AC’s expert will be able to shed more light on this but in my mind its currently not adding much weight to WADAs view of what happened.
Discussed here before. Studies involving thousands of subjects have shown that virtually everyone has detectable levels of DEHP metabolites in their urine. But the levels seen within forty-eight hours of a transfusion are very high, very rarely seen in individuals who did not transfuse. IOW, false positives appear to be on the order of one in a thousand.
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