Tuesday, October 16, 2007

"The majority contradicted itself and presented outright lies as their justification for conviction"

Wherein Floyd Landis is appealing


Even though Floyd Landis is appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Oscar Pereiro was given the yellow jersey for the 2006 Tour de France. There is the possibility that early next near Landis could win his appeal and be declared the 2006 TdF winner. Again. None of this is fair to Pereiro or Landis, but in their zeal to brand all accused as guilty, WAGA, UCI, and USADA (probably a few more acronyms I forgot) have continuously trampled over their own procedures and the rights of the riders.

As I've been saying for over a year, none of the Landis case has ever made any sense. The system is broken and the keepers of the system are more corrupt than the athletes they're pursuing:
The decisive part of the Landis arbitration was the reliability of the IRMS tests. In the critical seven paragraphs of the award, the majority contradicted itself and presented outright lies as their justification for conviction. In saying the arguments of the Landis experts were "unsound and without any reasonable scientific basis", they have shown the dishonesty and duplicity that the WADA/CAS community will go to to protect their own interests to convict an athlete.

Read the rest of Seven Paragraphs at Trust But Verify for the full breakdown.

3 Comments:

Blogger Callimachus said...

The only narrative that makes sense to me is, Landis flubbed the race in that one stage. But he wanted some dignity back, so he took the drugs -- like they all do -- but in a reckless amount, for the next stage. But he pumped himself up so much he actually won the damned thing. Not very good, but it's the best I got.

10/16/2007 08:55:00 PM  
Blogger bill said...

Yeah, except for what he's accused of it makes no sense to only see a one day spike. He should've tested positive a couple more times.

The test is for the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. Landis' actual testosterone level was shown to be lower than normal. Lab directors for three other WADA labs testified that Landis' results were within normal bounds and wouldn't have raised any red flags.

10/16/2007 10:19:00 PM  
Blogger Callimachus said...

It's all very weird: We get to see him at close-range here (his parents live within biking distance -- for normal cyclists) and he seems honestly to think he is innocent. If so, I get the impression he was the only person in cycling who wasn't enhancing his performance.

10/17/2007 05:25:00 PM  

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