oldroadman
Veteran
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Exactly. Hotels don't give out room numbers for security and privacy reasons. Testers surely have other ways of making contact, where a team is in a hotel, contact the DS. Not difficult!
Doping git thread
- Thread starter rich p
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oldroadman
Veteran
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The vampires (blood testers checking h-crit) come with their needles and centrifuges at 0600. No fun when you got to sleep at 2300 and expect a rest until at least 0900.
S-Express
Guest
Nothing to stop the front desk putting a call up to the room though. No privacy issue there. My point about the mobile phone is that someone in her position (ie a world class athlete in demand from a lot of different directions) will be checking her phone all the time (except for when she's on the bike, obviously).
I wonder when WADA et al will get with modern technology. A text message and answerphone is last centuries technology. Tracking a mobile phone is so much easier and would help the situation so much. Yes you would still need to set out your plans so that the testers are not chasing around everywhere, but it would save a lot of hassle if they could actually track you before they come knocking.
A lot of this debate about hotels, phones on silent, not being called up is great when we're talking about your first missed test, but after two I think you give up your right to get a good night's sleep every night. At that point, the onus is on you as the athlete to make sure there are no more screw-ups. I am sure we can all accept that one test might get missed occasionally - but the reason why the ban comes for three is there is no excuse for it to be habitual. Don't want to get woken up at 6am having got to bed at 11pm? Don't miss two other tests...
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
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- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
And it would be a good way for testers to hinder an athlete that they don't want to win for any reason.
Yeah, but at what point do you want athletes to worry about the admin and stress of appealing a missed test? Do they regard one or two disputable missed tests as within tolerance, or must they start appealing every one and burn more resources of the anti-doping authorities which may mean a cheating competitor of theirs goes untested some time when they could have been caught?
One thing I'm not clear about from the rules excerpt and I don't have time to dig through the definitions to understand is: does a "Filing Failure" or "Missed Test" count as a "decision" that can be appealed to NADP (what's that?) or CAS, or is only a ban a "decision"?
Night time testing was used before (and during?) the 2015 TdF. I'm not sure whether it's been abandoned or not.
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
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- The Red Enclave
As per Article 2, the athlete may request an "administrative review" of each Whereabouts Failure. You would assume such a request was made by Armitstead or her representatives after the first missed test, but the independent reviewer apparently decided in UKAD's favour and the Whereabouts Failure was thus recorded against her. Or maybe she didn't request the review, imagining that she wouldn't be so careless as to miss two subsequent tests within the following 12 months.
This is not the same as an appeal to CAS, which, if I've understood correctly, can only be made after a formal charge of a doping violation (ie after the third missed test, not after the first one, since one missed test does not in itself constitute a doping violation, hence there is nothing to appeal against).
I hope she is sincere in her statement that she wants to work with UKAD to find ways to avoid such miscommunications in future. It would be in the interests of both the athlete and the anti-doping authorities to prevent these situations arising, which are embarrassing for both sides. If the 20th August 2015 test had gone off as planned, we would still be none the wiser to the subsequent missed tests. I've seen a lot of ignorant foaming and frothing on facebook about this, suggesting a "cover up" to prevent the missed tests being reported in the media before today. The UKAD rules make very clear they will not publish details of doping charges before the final outcome is known. As has been discussed earlier, those of us who follow pro cycling regularly will be well aware of the late withdrawals from races due to mysterious "illness" that happen all the time, and may draw inferences from them - as we might have done from Armitstead's late withdrawal from La Course - but it seems only fair to me that any suggestions of wrongdoing should be kept out of the public spotlight until a formal charge is confirmed because of the serious damage they can do to an athlete's reputation. Individual missed tests must be fairly common.
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mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Trouble is, it's not only that, is it? She'd also need to imagine that the testers won't be so careless as to make another similarly pathetic attempt to find her and I'm not sure why she'd do that after they'd done it once... so I suspect there was a review which ruled against her.
Edit: as later posts show, she didn't request a review
Far too much trust in the testers, no faith in the reviewers, or what?
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Looks like we were both partly right - my vague memory of one missed test and @smutchin 's of Froome saying he'll be more pro-active in instructions to hotel staff in future.
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
- Location
- The Red Enclave
Yes, I suspect so too. With so much at stake, it would be odd not to use any avenue of redress available to you.
So, assuming she did request a review, it's interesting that the independent reviewer appointed by UKAD came to a different conclusion to the CAS panel. But again, we don't know the reasons for that, all we have is speculation...
And I'm assuming I've interpreted the rules correctly too!
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
- Location
- The Red Enclave
By the way, the nadp.co.uk address given in the UKAD rulebook is a broken link. Here's the correct url:
https://www.sportresolutions.co.uk/services/national-anti-doping-panel
If I've understood correctly, this is the body that handles appeals from athletes competing at national level or lower. CAS is for athletes competing internationally.
https://www.sportresolutions.co.uk/services/national-anti-doping-panel
If I've understood correctly, this is the body that handles appeals from athletes competing at national level or lower. CAS is for athletes competing internationally.
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
- Location
- The Red Enclave
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
- Location
- The Red Enclave
smutchin
Cat 6 Racer
- Location
- The Red Enclave
"Under the World Anti-Doping Code an athlete may be required to provide a sample at any time and at any place, including the middle of the night, without advanced notice. However, testing authorities recognise that regularly testing athletes in the middle of the night may not be fair, so to test an athlete between the hours of 23:00 and 06:00, UKAD would need to have serious and specific suspicions that an athlete may be engaged in doping."
https://cleansportblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/understanding-the-whereabouts-system/