Contador fails drug test

[GrumpyGregry]

Yet again pro cycling sits at its desk staring at the loaded revolver lying before it.

My inner cynic now concludes they are all cheats, and it is only a matter of time before our current crop of heroes, whosoever they may be, are found to be zeroes after all, every podium finishing, billy whizz sprinting man jack of 'em

Let the cycling authorities blaze a trail, not in developing regimes that can detect homeopathic concentrations of banned substances in a given blood sample with all the farce that will entail "Clearly m'lud my client was bitten by a mosquito which had just bitten a spanish cow, why he even has the scars" but rather in allowing doping.

It is a professional sport. One in which new technology is regularly legalised. Toeclips anyone? All the corinthian cries of "but people want to compete on a level playing field" are shamateuristic nonsense. Not many Ethiopian cyclists competing on the European circuit, or Peruvians, or Indonesians are there?

*runs*

 

[yello]

I refer the honourable gentlemen to the answer given by ? (FM??) several pages ago.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I refer the honourable gentlemen to the answer given by ? (FM??) several pages ago.

Yes, we've done this one and Greg's argument wasn't any better that time!

 

[rich p]

It may be a small amount but who cares. How did it get there is the question? The meat story is laughable and the last throw of a desperate man matched only by Dennis Mitchell's 6 times a night sex alibi and Tyler's chimera.

Below is the quote from CN using stats fro the EU. If the bastards are microdosing then amounts will be necessarily small anyway.




Contador will have to prove his meat was contaminated but official data shows that Clenbuterol has only shown up once in 83,203 animal samples tested by EU countries in 2008 and 2009 and never in Spain

 

[yello]

It may be a small amount but who cares.

I'd guess 'who cares' is exactly where a defence could be made. I don't know about the major tenets of law but I'd think there'd be something about same rules for all, or something like that. If those same samples would have been given the green light by another approved lab then I can see grounds for defence and even dismissal. Not saying it's right or wrong, or whether Bertie doped or not, just that I can see the argument. And I can equally see how it MUST be like that.

 

[andrew_s]

Is the animal sample testing sensitive enough to detect low levels of clenbuterol?
It was brought in after people were showing up in hospital with levels high enough to cause them problems.

83,000 samples in 2 years shows that most animals get onto the market without being tested.

Dosing of cattle with clenbuterol is still going on. There were some people caught for it only a few weeks ago in Spain (a trawl sparked off by the Contador case?).

I reckon contaminated meat is a very much better excuse than the normal contaminated supplements.

 

[Smokin Joe]

But Clenbuterol in the system combined with evidence of transfusions does tend to add up to a less than innocent explanation as to how it got there.

This makes interesting reading -

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/5...-transfusion-prior-to-the-Tour-de-France.aspx

 

[rich p]

Apart from the evidence, we've all 'known' for years that Bertie was guilty as hell!

 

[Chuffy]

Is the animal sample testing sensitive enough to detect low levels of clenbuterol?
It was brought in after people were showing up in hospital with levels high enough to cause them problems.

83,000 samples in 2 years shows that most animals get onto the market without being tested.

Dosing of cattle with clenbuterol is still going on. There were some people caught for it only a few weeks ago in Spain (a trawl sparked off by the Contador case?).

I reckon contaminated meat is a very much better excuse than the normal contaminated supplements.

Senor Carne de Vaca said "I have never tested positive and am available for testing when ever required. I can do no more. Moo".
But hey, no positives means no problem! Right?

 

[yello]

My gut feeling is he is guilty as rumoured... but courts tend to have different means of deciding matters.

It wouldn't surprise me if this ends up being dismissed entirely or as just a token suspension, but it could go to CAS to get that. The Spanish Federation says 'nada', UCI - pushed by WADA - pack a sad and take it to CAS. CAS says 'stop fighting you girls or I'll send you to your rooms' and hands down a judgement of 'case not proven', or benefit of the doubt, or summat like that. Contador will breath a mighty sigh of relief and we'll be back where we started.

 

[Aperitif]

My gut feeling is he is guilty as rumoured... but courts tend to have different means of deciding matters.

It wouldn't surprise me if this ends up being dismissed entirely or as just a token suspension, but it could go to CAS to get that. The Spanish Federation says 'nada', UCI - pushed by WADA - pack a sad and take it to CAS. CAS says 'stop fighting you girls or I'll send you to your rooms' and hands down a judgement of 'case not proven', or benefit of the doubt, or summat like that. Contador will breath a mighty sigh of relief and we'll be back where we started.

Good summary yello - I thought the same after reading the bit about the timings permitted, and the subsequent appeal procedure.
Too much at 'steak'...

 

[adscrim]

Too much at 'steak'...

The steaks were too high!

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Yes, we've done this one and Greg's argument wasn't any better that time!

To be fair this is true. Guilty as charged. But then the counter arguments haven't advanced much either.

So why should a chap or chapess follow a sport in which the probability is that the chief particpants are out and out cheats then? Or more pertinently why should the CEO or Marketing Director* of a commercial company with sound ethics and a sensible CSR policy sponsor cycle sport in any way? Why would the mainstream/serious sports media cover cycling at all? They don't devote column inches to pro wrestling do they?

* I was dining with one recently, works for a European mainland based multi-national. They used to do a bit of sponsorhip of cycling events, albeit off-road years ago but now sponsorship of cyclo-sport in any form, nationally/locally is on their proscribed list of activities. They've taken up sponsoring something else instead, sport x, even in countries where the alternative is very much a minority sport, because "the values of sport x are seen as complementing our values whereas cycling is.... tainted..."

 

[philipbh]

http://tiny.cc/xzjxp

This article from the Melbourne Herald Sun (reporting an AFP story) suggests another 2 - 3 month wait until Spains cycling federation (RFEC) make a decision

 

[beastie]

The steaks were too high!

Only chefs are allowed to make "steak" jokes.