Landis loses appeal to AAA...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/sep07/sep21news
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/ap_on_sp_ot/cyc_landis_decision_12

 

doh!... you beat me by 1 minute

 

A real shame. They found that the original test was invalid and that the agency did not have proper chain of command, yet they still validated the isotope test?

 

I posted in the doping thread...

 

So it really sucks that the doper didn't get his positive thrown out because the lab fucked up one of the tests?

Floyd not as lucky as Landaluze, who got off due to the LNDD's incompetence.

 

Next cheater:

When will Jan Ulrich be banned for life?

 

but they found the the isotope test was run properly... and it's more accurate than the original test... so what's the problem?

if i rob a bank and they determined that the eye witness that supposedly saw me do it lied... but they also have high definition video of me doing it, do they throw out the case because the lower quality eyewitness testimony turned out to be faulty?

oh and just to stave off anyone who wants to say that 1 of the arbitrators voted in favour of Landis... this is Landis' advocate. the accused is allowed to choose one expert who the other arbitrator approve to be on the pannel. so if Landis' hand picked expert didn't vote for him then that would have been REALLY bad. 2:1 is what is expected in these cases.

 

I would say it is a shame that the UCI has not put the effort in that they should to make the process unassailable. Instead we have to put up with the likes of Armstrong, Hamilton, and Landis blaming a French conspiracy. An acknowledgement that the test was partially messed up does not help the situation.

 

Fair enough re: the test results being 'unassailable'. But the cycling world has moved on. Did anyone really care what Armstrong, Hamilton and Landis claim? Closure is always a good thing, but this has dragged on for so long that even if Landis had been awarded the TdF no one would have really cared. And do you really think a team (beyond Tinkoff, that is) would have picked him up to ride the coming Tour?

It would have been even sadder to see him riding Gran Fondos in the US and Europe, a la Rumsas.

 

Uh, no the problem is more like this:

They assert you robbed a bank and have two pieces of evidence: a gun and a videotape. The videotape is determined to have been worked on with a computer so is thrown out, the gun has no chain of posession to it and cannot be proven to not have been tampered with or planted and they claim that it was found in your house. You get convicted.

That's why saying that chain of posession not being properly documented and followed is enough to say the test is not valid.

 

I don't think Landis would ever have been allowed by the ASO to ride the TdF again unless he could have shown the positive was a huge mistake and that he he did not dope. Getting off on a technicality still would not have swayed the ASO.

The time span is another thing that needs to be fixed in the process. It is ridiculous that it takes fourteen months to come up with an initial guilty finding (even though a lot of the delay is Landis' defense team's fault).

A huge problem with the finding is that it acknowledges problems with the IRMS/CIR testing but says that they do not rise to the level that would invalidate the results. At the same time it warns that if the problems continue it might be grounds for tossing out the results in the future. Some will argue that this is convenient and contradictory. The Landis true believers are going to walk away outraged and never accept the results.

 

show me where it says the "chain of possestion".. i saw "chain of command" i'm still trying to figure out what that means?

 

i'm just going by the two stories i've read and linked to above... show me where it says that there is a problem with the carbon isotope testing? i only see that there was a problem the the prescreening test for testosterone : epitestosterone ratio... but the reason the ruled against Landis was the there was NO problem with the more rigorous, more accurate carbon isotope test... Landis' advocate the decenting panelist says that they believe that the lab may have messed up the more complex test since there was problems with the pre-screening test but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of mistakes... it seems like it's just a comfidence thing. Landis' team is allowed to observe the B analysis as well... so you'd think that is there was a problem with the proceedure they would have presented it to the panel. as far as i can see there was no problem with the isotope test though...

 

Except that they did the isotope test on his other blood samples in the race and found that most of them were also over the 4:1 limit (this was not evidence in the case I believe).

Are you proposing a conspiracy, involving UCI, WADA, and a handful of independent scientists and lab assistants, or just that they negligently mixed up his sample with another testosterone user?

I still can't work out the motivation of Landis' manager to threaten Lemond, unless Lemond had something on them.

 

The USAA arb lone descenter is biased too:

Super sized Christopher Campbell is a former Olympic wrestler. Are you really surprised that he sided with Tyler Hamilton and Roid Landis's dopey positions of missing twins and lab conspiracies??? Steroids are a key to wrestling too.

You gotta have an athlete apologist on every jury. OJ Simpson had tweleve.

 

There were problems with the CI test - remember the photos of lifting magnets strewn on top of the CI machine? Incorrect software? Untrained operator? Beyond that, there was the generally sloppy manner in which LNDD had been shown to operate, and the fact that they failed to follow established procedures. Not once, but repeatedly. Lack of instutional control seems to sum up that lab's modus operandi.

Actually, the panel had no choice. They couldn't let FL off without undermining the current anti-doping stance. This wasn't a technical decision, it was a political decision. The UCI has pretty much admitted that LNDD's tests aren't reliable, by sending Mayo's B samples to other labs for testing. Too bad that procedure wasn't retroactive.

What bothers me is the manner in which these decisions are being made. If the price of stamping out doping is a judicial method that relies on sloppy labs, information leaks, and innuendo, has the sport been made any better? The whole point of fighting doping is to put the riders back on a level playing field. But if the methods of accomplishing this are arbitrary and inaccurate, all that has been done is shifting performance enhancement from drugs to political or economic pressure.

 

You mean like this:

"If such practises continue, it may well be that in the future, an error like this could result in the dismissal'' of a positive finding by the lab."

There were some problems with the IRMS test. The panel ruled that they did not invalidate the results. I don't think there is any problem with that; Landis was clearly doping. The doping apologists, who have built the case into some sort of travesty of justice while conveniently ignoring the fact that Landis was doping, will not accept the ruling.

 

i don't want to belabour the point, but show where in that statment it says they are talking about problems with the IRMS test... there is no mention of a problem with the IRMS test in the whole article only for the testosterone-epitestosterone test so i don't think it unreasonable to assume those are the errors they are talking about here since they are the only errors actually talked about in the article. i really don't know if there were errors in the IRMS test, but there is certainly no mention of them in these articles. i'm serious is there someone that can point me to some mention of errors made in the IRMS test?

 

Is it just me or does it seem like people could care less about Landis? Had this happened 12 months ago... hell, six months ago, this forum would have blown up and there would have been twelve different threads on this topic. Now even the one thread about the Tour champion losing his appeal gets scant traffic.

 

So true but this is the best news I've heard in months...... hopefully now we can put behind us the drug culture USPS/Disco cultivated through the peleton...... I still think Landis will confess....... as LeMond said... the house of cards is falling....... if we want to get on with cycling guys like Landis need to be out of the picture...... now what about the Vuelta stage today ! Now that was racing ! LOL !