This first installment in a multi-part series on the kangaroo court/show trial system of policing drugs in sports (or "sport" as the British say) is long overdue, and should have been undertaken by the largely acquiescent cycling-press (I'm looking at you, ProCycling).
It's a still-timid piece that dares raise the questions: Does zero-tolerance work? How effective is a policy of punishing those who unwittingly ingest substances that contaminate supplements, or that appear in concentrations far too small to affect performance in any way? Is this causing more harm than good? Ask the still-appropriately named Dick Pound:
"The less discretion there is in the finding of a doping offense, the better it is," he told The Times in an interview.
In the closed, secretive, arbitrary fiefdom that is USADA/WADA, an "investigation" of this sort basically means disclosing the obvious: the rules are arbitrary, and the authorities are themselves judge, jury, and executioner, and athletes are guilty as soon as charged.
Several prominent links - among them a powerpoint->PDF of the defense case for Floyd Landis. Basically: it comes down to the fact that the tests of FL's pee were mislabeled and mishandled; the lab in France made a number of probably harmless clerical errors, but such sloppy lab work would not stand up in any court of law. Floyd's A and B results both were apparently positive, but gave such widely varying results as to call the test itself into question. At no point can FL's advocates claim that he is innocent and this is all a mistake, but instead that the evidence against him is so error-ridden and inconsistent as to call the entire case into question. I can imagine with Pound of Dick would say to that. We don't have to imagine. He has said publicly in the past that if USADA doesn't get the result he wants, that he would bring the full weight of WADA down on Landis. Pound claims that drugs are the greatest danger to sport. I rather think that autocrats like Pound are much scarier.
Hi, linked this into the daily roundup of Landis news at trust but verify.
You'll find more there about the Landis case than most people would want to know.
TBV
Posted by: trust but verify | 10 December 2006 at 07:15