Contador hearing delayed

Come on CAS and everyone else - get your act together and get this case heard before and a definitive judgement reached before the TdF starts.

Surely it can't be that hard to pull together the evidence, after all most of it must have been there for the original hearing.

For now I will keep my opinions on the case to myself, but I do think it was entirely right for the original judgement to be appealed, so that there is an international precedent that can be consistently applied for any similar cases.

if contador gets cleared it will be a horrendous day for cycling

Not sure if there is any case anyway, with the incredibly low concentration.

Any half-decent lawyer could get this thrown out, which is possibly what is behind the delays.

A Kafkaesque scenario awaits ahead if Bertie wins the Tour and then the "case" is heard: could possibly the greatest Grand Tour rider we've seen in many decades be stripped of THREE titles (last year's Tour, this year's Giro and this year's Tour)??

There'd be riots in Spain and heaven knows what other ramifications.

Interesting old mess the "ruling" bodies have made for themselves eh?

"Not sure if there is any case anyway, with the incredibly low concentration.

Any half-decent lawyer could get this thrown out, which is possibly what is behind the delays."

Sorry, but this is wrong, simply because there is no lower limit for Clenbuterol, and it is not a naturally occurring substance in the human body. The concentration found (provided that it was correctly identified) is irrelevant to the defence.

CAS et al have now really made a rod for their own backs by deferring the hearing until August. As mentioned above, there would now be the absurdity that if found guilty, Contador will be stripped of 2 and potentially 3 Grand Tour titles (the TdF 2010, where he returned the 'positive' test, the Giro just finished and the up-coming Tour).

Absolute b***dy c0ck up from beginning to end.

"...there is no lower limit for Clenbuterol..."

Sez who?

What "defence"?

Sorry to pick hairs but I repeat, these are self-appointed bodies with only quasi-legal powers.

I agree with you-this is an almighty BCU and we'll see it unfold with interest!

Azabache

OK, so WADA and CAS don't have 'legal' status in terms of national laws, but they do in a de facto sense for any sporting federation that has signed up to the WADA guidelines. As such, if WADA's agreed documentation says there is no lower limit value for Clenbuterol, and Clenbuterol is found in a rider's sample, that is a positive test unless extraordinary evidence can be produced to demonstrate a 'no fault' occurrence.

OK, the Spanish authorities accepted the defence put forward by Contador and his legal team, but other national federations have rejected similar defences (including China, with the ex-Radioshack rider whose name I can't remember at the moment, even though the likelihood of consuming Clenbuterol-contaminated meat is much higher in China than in the EU). As such, it left WADA and the UCI with little choice but to appeal the decision.

The whole thing does make me question the wisdom of allowing individual national federations to make decisions on rider suspensions when there is clearly a difference in the tolerance to doping infractions between the federations - ignoring the Contador case, both the Spanish and Italian Federations have tended to take a more lenient view on doping than say the French, German (at least in recent years) or UK Federations.

The Chinese rider was Fuyu Li I think.

I agree about the National Federations thing. The situation is the same in athletics. A Jamaican gets caught and gets a slap on the wrist from the Jamaican federations, a similar offence would result in a 1 or 2 year ban from the British authorities.

I can't accept that we have to let Contador off simply because he's good. That's a bit daft. It's fine being fans of these people, but to be so worshipful that you feel that they're above doping rules because of their stature is a nonsense.

Just as 'you know who' is about to find out.

You may have hit on a radical solution to the "problem"!

Or is this what we have de facto?

If you think that catching drug cheats and then actually banning them is a radical solution, maybe?

I know you have a problem with this method of dealing with drug cheats. It might get in the way of 'moments of history' or something.

I was merely alluding to your point that the greater the status, the more likely...

I hope I haven't given the impression that you suggest. I simply have always been confused as to whether some "drugs" really make much difference at a high level and I do worry about cross-contamination in manufacturing processes, and all the other ways substances can show up.

To me it has absolutely nothing to do with clenbuterol or whether he took that as a performance enhancer, or whether it does enhance performance.

It's just very obvious that he didn't get it from a dodgy piece of meat important especially for him that night.

But something he did on that evening put some clenbuterol in his system. Erm, wonder what that could be?

Firstly, there is absolutely no performance enhancement from the trace level of Clenbuterol that Contador had in his system. Whether even at high levels it has any worthwhile performance enhancing effect on an endurance athlete is something that is probably not known with any certainty (unlike for example EPO and derivatives, or blood doping, both of which do clearly have a beneficial effect on aerobic endurance events - as an aside, I remember a comment several years ago stating that EPO was most effective at improving performance for efforts of about 20 minutes, which always makes me suspicious as to how much the 5000m and 10000m athletics records improved during the EPO era).

There is a debate to be had about whether some of the things that are banned should be, or at least whether there should be a significant relaxation of limits (for things like pseudoephedrine, which is found in over the counter cold and flu medicines, which have minimal performance enhancing effect and which are not harmful when used as normal medication).
I'd also quite like WADA to look again at the issue with positives coming from contamination in some supplements - there is a case of a Sale rugby player who returned a positive test and received a (relatively short) ban because of contamination in a Maxi-Muscle or similar type supplement, despite the manufacturers providing an analysis for the product indicating no illegal substances (noting of course that the testing was carried out on a different batch of product from that taken), and that the supplement had actually been purchased and provided to the player by the club.

Thank you. Eloquently and cogently put without being rude to your fellow posters!

I worry about contamination from OTC products. I worked in manufacturing for some years and know that "QC", "QA", ISO standards and all the rest of it are largely myths used as a sop for the big corporate customers to tick their boxes and pretend they're buying ethically.

Not for nothing do we get those pack warnings about "may contain nut traces". And with the growth of multinationals using lower cost countries for their manufacturing, I forsee more of these contamination issues.

This of course allows a field day for legal objections from the real rogues...

dummy_half wrote:Firstly, there is absolutely no performance enhancement from the trace level of Clenbuterol that Contador had in his system.

I fully agree.

The performance enhancement came from the bag of packed cells the clenbuterol trace came from.

And now announced that the hearing has been put back to November.

Having been involved in Expert cases and arbitrations (in an entirely unrelated field), this does seem to be taking an awfully long time to play through the system. My suspicion from the delays is that it is proving to be a very complex question rather than the open and shut case some thought.

Or they're just hoping if they put it off for long enough, Contador will be long retired before the hearing happens so any news that he was guilty (assuming of course that he was cheating) will be more of a Riise level revelation than a Landis one.

He's relatively young to be retiring yet and it's not as if his performances have declined.

We'll watch this with interest.

djlovesyou wrote:To me it has absolutely nothing to do with clenbuterol or whether he took that as a performance enhancer, or whether it does enhance performance.

It's just very obvious that he didn't get it from a dodgy piece of meat important especially for him that night.

~ Why sir, the only thing obvious is that nobody knows of any circumstances to comment.

I would add that Mexico has had a problem with 100+clenbuterol poisonings because of unscrupulous ranchers enhancing their profit and this just Mexico.

Brush your teeth with your favorite toothpaste and you might be poisoning yourself from contaminated products imported from China or elsewhere that the western INC uses to make and otherwise distribute for enhanced profits. Come on this or any forum and perhaps someday a bug will strike that downs your 'puter.

Nothing is safe which is why nutcases who hate athletes, biking and PEDs but love News of the World style innuendo are still following pro biking with silly putty hoopla.

Hmmm, oldest rider since WW2 to win the TDF, and nary a squeak out of you peeps?

Azabache wrote:He's relatively young to be retiring yet and it's not as if his performances have declined.

I wasn't being completely serious but was just trying to imply they're going to keep postponing it for years to come;)

Because, I suspect, it's a legal minefield and expensive lawyers are on the roster. Every cross-contamination case, however tenuous and wherever, creates precedent. The learned professor mentions unscrupulous practices in Mexico, but there are very many much nearer to home.

I have previously endeavoured to draw parallels with unregulated manufacturing processes-particularly involving 3rd. country outsourcing-to be sniped at by A. N. Other, but I stand by what I say. Like Dummy, I have legal experience in unrelated areas and to me this is a mess, big time.

I can't see how a substance is a no-no at a certain defined detection level but then, hey presto, is a no-no at any level, even akin to a "cup in a swimming pool" (or was it a thimble?). Of course the lawyers will then seize on this muddleheadedness, given published and proven contamination issues.

We all surely want justice and fairness for all without this lazy News of the Screws-style innuendo.

Azabache

If you think this one's a mess, just take a look at the Mosquera case - apparently the substance he tested positive for is only illegal if taken intravenously, but can be taken orally legally. Of course there is no way of knowing after the fact how he consumed the substance and so he might well be cleared on that technicality.

Oh, and I think the level of Contador's positive test was a lot lower even than a thimble in a swimming pool - however, from an analytical chemistry perspective, the argument is that Clenbuterol should not be in his system at all (so it wasn't illegal only above a certain level), and the lower limit of detection in this case was simply that the apparatus used at that lab had been improved.

dummy_half wrote:Oh, and I think the level of Contador's positive test was a lot lower even than a thimble in a swimming pool - however, from an analytical chemistry perspective, the argument is that Clenbuterol should not be in his system at all (so it wasn't illegal only above a certain level), and the lower limit of detection in this case was simply that the apparatus used at that lab had been improved.

That is my understanding - clenbuterol is banned at any concentration at all but WADA have a minimum level a lab must be able to detect for the lab to be used which is a different matter from the amount an athlete can have in their body.