Welcome back, DQ. Long time.
The next step in this process is to go before an independent review panel. Anyone know anything about this? Like, how big is the panel, who chooses the members, who is eligible to be chosen?
The USADA letter says that “assessing the weight of the evidence is not …part of the process of the Review Board.” Then what is the Board supposed to do? How can it decide whether the case should proceed to a hearing without considering the weight of the evidence? What other considerations would be relevant? If they decided against proceeding to a hearing, what would the rationale be if not the weight of the evidence?
Also, USADA says it has to redact the names of those charged from the written submission to the panel. I don’t understand this at all. Everyone connected with cycling knows at this point who those charged are. What is the point of blacking out their names?
Finally, I think we all should have learned a lesson from the federal investigation. Celebrations are premature. It ain’t over till it’s over. LA’s rep has taken another well-deserved hit, no matter what the outcome this is a step a lot of us have hoped for, but it’s not a slam dunk that he will lose some or all of this titles and/or be banned from Tri for life. This is pretty much uncharted territory, getting a rider sanctioned on the basis of witness testimony. The Leogrande case has some elements of a precedent, but there was a smoking gun there, it didn’t rely entirely on witnesses.
The evidence is almost entirely based on testimony of events that occurred seven or more years ago, by riders who in some cases have very little credibility. Of all the riders we have reason to think testified, Hincapie’s would probably be the most credible and valuable, but we don’t know what he said. There seems to be two general kinds of testimony: seeing LA administer drugs to himself or other riders, and hearing LA say that he was taking drugs. The latter is not very strong or convincing, and as those following the Roger Clemens case learned, testimony like that can later be weaseled out of to some extent.
One of the reasons I thought Contador had a weak case was because his lawyers introduced several arguments that were obviously extremely weak. If you have a strong case based on one particular line of evidence, you focus on that. But they used a scattershot approach, clearly hoping one of several different tactics would work. This showed me they didn’t have strong faith in any one approach.
USADA's is better in that respect, but it has some of the same approach. Most of their letter is about the witnesses, making it crystal clear that this is the heart of their case. They are focusing on that, which is what they should do. But they also mention the Saugy/EPO test evidence, even though Saugy has said categorically that he will never testify that that test was a positive. So that is basically useless evidence, except to the extent that it corroborates a picture of a doper. It’s padding, to make the case look like it is based on more than witness testimony, to make it look like they have an actual positive test.
Likewise with the 09-10 blood parameters. If they had a case against him for that, why didn’t they bring it earlier? Someone here said that they agreed to hold off until the federal investigation was complete. But that investigation began in May, 2010, almost a year after LA’s first TDF following retirement. If his blood values for that year were suspicious, a case should have been opened at the time. I think they fall into the same situation Contador’s did. They suggest the possibility of manipulation, but they are not sufficient by themselves to make a case. Ashenden has published research showing the passport can be beaten by transfuers who know what they’re doing. The greatest utility of the 09-10 blood values, I think, is that they allow the USADA the rationale for getting around the SOL on charges for earlier years. They want to make the case that LA continued to dope when he came out of retirment. But again, I doubt very much that this evidence rises to anywhere near what is needed for a positive test. Granted, all I have seen are LA’s published values. There may be more. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram