I did. I brought up the possibility of two doping offenses a year ago. And he could have been convicted of two offenses, and received a much longer ban. The WADA rules, which I quoted here last year, clearly allow for this. It didn’t work out that way, I and I think that part of the decision was correct, but it was a possibility.
Thanks for the link, Gooner. Two really interesting points from the Rendell blog that Gooner’s story linked to:
Contador's expert haematologist is demonstrably mistaken elsewhere in his testimony regarding clenbuterol doses, mainly because he doesn't realise the drugs is used intravenously, as well as orally (paragraph 414). All he needed to do was leave the laboratory for a minute and read a blog or two written by bodybuilders who use the product (paragraph 417a).
So the claim is that nanogram doses of CB can be effective if they are given intravenously. I’m not convinced of that, but the more general idea is correct: a drug like CB can be effective at a lower dose if it is given IV rather than orally. And as I noted in my previous post, an IV dose of a given amount of drug results in much higher blood levels. Thus the Contador argument that he would have had to take several 100 ug of the drug to get the level in blood necessary for transfused blood to give the urine values detected is rebutted. I think Rendell is correct here.
If nanogram amounts of CB IV are effective, one could argue that Bert took CB intentionally some time between his negative test on July 20 and his positive test on July 21. This now becomes a fourth “possibility” that could have been put into play. However, this can be refuted, again, by my previous argument: if he had taken enough CB IV to give the detected urine values, a blood test would have detected considerably more than 1 pg/ml.
To repeat, if the 1 pg/ml value for blood is correct, I think it rules out transfusion or any other type of intravenous administration of CB. I believe this argument is not simply strong, but compelling. There simply is no way that one can take a dose of CB large enough to give the reported urine values that will result in a blood level of 1 pg/ml.
So this further supports the argument against any sanction. There seem to be four possibilities accounting for how CB got into Bert’s system, two of which can be definitively ruled out: transfusion of contaminated blood, and direct IV administration of CB. This leaves just two possibilities, contaminated meat and contaminated supplement. The first is not sanctionable, and my argument is that if the supplement was contaminated, it was at a level that should also not be sanctionable.
In fact, there is no evidence I’m aware of that CB has ever been found in a supplement at a level above the NZVT standard. All the published studies of supplement analysis I have seen have failed to find any CB contamination. CB was found in supplements listed by Hardy, but at one lab (ADR) that has a LOD of 10 ng/g (ten times more sensitive than NZVT), and at another lab (Equine) that has an even lower LOD. It was very clear that the amount of CB detected by both labs was far below the amount that would have been required to account for Hardy’s urine level (4 ng/ml). All of this further supports the contention that if it was contaminated supplement, Bert was not at fault. He can point to abundant scientific evidence that has failed to find CB contamination in supplements at a level that could account for his positive.
This brings me to the second interesting Rendell quote:
Article 21 of the UCI's anti-doping regulations, which explicitly warns riders that they must 'refrain from using any substance foodstuff, food supplement or drink of which they do not know the composition ... the composition indicated on a product is not always complete.'
If a supplement contains less than a standard like 100 ng/g of CB, which it almost certainly would have in Bert’s case, then its composition is “known”. This is how “known” is defined—any contaminants exist below a certain agreed-upon standard. Scientific analysis can never prove that a supplement contains no contamination whatsoever (a major point made by the article Gooner linked to). Analysis can only say that there is no contamination above a certain concentration. This is all that a rule like Article 21 can possibly hold an athlete to.
Again, the argument is analogous to the one that could have been successfully used for meat contamination. If Bert’s urine level had been lower, he could have argued that the CB could have come from meat that passed the Euro standard. He would have gotten off, because such meat has no “known” CB. It is not and cannot be his responsibility.
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