RobbieCanuck said:
Basically, yes, except for two key points. While WADA has always emphasized that it’s the athlete’s responsibility to know what goes into his system, there are several anti-doping organizations, in particular a Dutch one (forgot the name, I discussed it here back in the post-CAS period) that have listed some supplements as safe for athletes to take. And their standard for CB is higher than what Contador likely would have consumed, making reasonable assumptions about how much supplement he might have taken.
This is the first key point. The standard here is not something needed to get on the market (there basically are no standards of this kind), but needed to win approval of an anti-doping organization. They are guaranteeing not that the supplement is safe to take from a health standpoint but that it's safe from a doping standpoint. It's not an industry standard, but an anti-doping standard.
WADA could have, and I’m sure would have, argued that it was still Contador’s responsibility. But that’s where the meat, and the second key point, comes in. A good lawyer would point out that WADA makes a reasonable exception for meat that passes the inspection standard, because no athlete can be held at fault for consuming something judged safe for the population as a whole. The difference, of course, is that every citizen is assumed to have a right to eat meat, and therefore it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure the safety of that meat. The right to take supplements is not quite the same; in fact, as I understand it, there are virtually no standards applied to the industry at all. Very much a caveat emptor situation.
But having a well-known anti-doping organization on your side would be a very powerful ally. If a rider can be judged guilty for taking something on the organization’s safe list, it destroys the organization’s credibility. I assume they would get involved at that point. And a key argument would be that current technology for most labs (the Cologne one was an exception) can’t detect CB below a certain level, and therefore a rider consuming such a supplement should not be liable.
Here's the second key point, where this case would differ from others where athletes argue they consumed a contaminated supplement. Contador would not have to prove there was any CB at all in the supplement. He only would have to prove that the amount present necessary to cause his positive was below a reasonable detection limit used in the the anti-doping organization. Again, this parallels the situation with meat. If you could get detectable levels of CB from eating inspected meat, you would not be expected to prove the meat you ate had any CB.This is a much better argument than the one used by athletes who eat meat in places like China and Mexico, because not all of the meat there is contaminated to a degree that it could cause a positive. But one has to presume that all Euro meat might contain CB up to the detection standard. It's not something that needs to be proven.
This is shown by the extensive arguments WADA used to establish that Contador's levels could not have resulted from meat passing the inspection standard, together with arguments showing that the vast majority of meat available to him would have passed the standard. There would have been no need to make such arguments if WADA could hold an athlete responsible for proving CB was in inspected meat.
lBeing able to prove the CB was there is in fact never possible, anyway, strictly speaking. What athletes do is show that one batch from the company that they purchased their supplement from is contaminated. Even if it's only one in thousands, and therefore very unlikely that their batch was contaminated, they use this argument, and sometimes get a reduced ban because of it.
I think probably, yes, but all they had to do was be vague, saying he sometimes takes them. They didn’t have to commit his defense to that, only leave the option open. However, at the initial Spanish hearing I guess he would have had to state whether or not he took any supplements in the Tour.
Ripper said:
Yes, but he denied taking any during the Tour. That was mentioned in the CAS report. Remember, prior to the decision, no one even thought that a contaminated supplement was a possible explanation. It was all meat vs. transfusion.
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