The Return of Lance Armstrong and the Floyd Landis Lawsuit

Lance Armstrong decides to return to the peloton and old retired slime balls resurface from the depths of the swamp.

Greg LeMond, who everyone wishes would just go away, points his accusatory sanctimonious finger at Armstrong for alleged but unproven doping. Not satisfied with this LeMond also accuses former UCLA WADA accredited lab director Don Catlin of conflict of interest. LeMond thinks Catlin is a scoundrel for taking money from Armstrong to do biological profile testing. The results of these biological profile tests, which are to be paid for by team Astana, are to be posted on the Internet for transparency to quell all doubts. Good luck with that.

Yes indeed. Lance Armstrong draws the criticism of the disaffected. Jean Marie LeBlanc piped up with his old doping accusations and his disappointment that Armstrong was never detected. Former WADA president Dick Pound agreed with LeBlanc. AFLD, the French doping authority went even further. They proposed to Armstrong that he allow further testing for rEPO of the 1999 Tour de France urine samples frozen in the vault of LNDD. These tests of the old 1999 Tour urine samples could, if found positive for rEPO, result in an Adverse Analytical Finding. AFLD is suggesting that if Lance Armstrong has nothing to hide he should agree with this nonsense. Wrong. AFLD and LNDD cannot be trusted to ensure that the samples are not compromised, tainted, sabotaged, degraded. Read the UCI Vrijman Report and dare to suggest that AFLD, WADA, and LNDD can be trusted. But even if the 1999 urine samples are still pristine, the offer of AFLD allowing the samples to be tested by any WADA accredited laboratory anywhere in Europe except LNDD is moot. Why? Because as we have seen, WADA, LNDD, and the CAS have a history of doubting any laboratory result except for the ones derived at LNDD. The 1999 Tour de France urine tests done for scientific research purposes at LNDD supposedly contained trace amounts of rEPO, traces that were found in the urine of Lance Armstrong. Any new finding that contradicts this finding by a different WADA accredited lab anywhere in Europe would be contested by AFLD as demonstrating incompetence, inexperience, lack of testing equipment, poor methodology, etc. Ask Iban Mayo. Lance do the sensible thing and refuse.

I commend Lance Armstrong for wanting to return to professional cycling to raise awareness of cancer. But I fear that the slime ball coalition of Greg LeMond, Dick Pound, Jean Marie LeBlanc, AFLD, and LNDD have a different agenda. They want to discredit you as a doper, past and present. Armstrong has a difficult decision to make, does the benefits derived from raising cancer awareness outweigh the costs of a bad laboratory urine sample test result, character assassination, hounding, and public humiliation that was foisted upon Floyd Landis and Iban Mayo. I think Lance Armstrong is making a mistake and perhaps he should reconsider.

Floyd Landis is suing in Federal Court to have the 2006 Tour de France CAS doping suspension overturned.

It appears that USA Cycling will refuse to issue Landis a racing license unless he pays a CAS ordered $100,000 fine. Reasonable people believe that Landis' case will be dismissed in United States Federal court because the CAS operates under Swiss law and only courts in Switzerland can rule on athlete/CAS legal disputes. Perhaps an expert in international arbitration law can explain how a quasi legal body like the CAS has international jurisdiction in sport arbitration, but be exempt from legal decisions anywhere else in the world except Switzerland. If a national or international court rules in favor of an athlete and against the CAS in a legal dispute citing national or international points of law outside of Switzerland is this invalid and non-binding? It seems obvious that the CAS should have no jurisdiction to arbitrate cases except for cases where an athlete has a Swiss license or in cases where a Swiss Anti-Doping Authority has a dispute with an athlete. Under this logic Landis could argue that the Court of Arbitration of Sport had no jurisdiction to rule in his case and impose sanctions. Therefore, the CAS ruling has no legal standing.

Perhaps someone could explain how the International Olympic Committee who originated the Court of Arbitration of Sport was allowed to declare that the CAS operates only under Swiss law because it is physically located in Switzerland? How is the CAS exempt from international points of law that originate outside of Switzerland when they have international jurisdiction in sport arbitration? Is this a legal swindle?

Floyd Landis has a valid argument. The CAS Panels do rule exclusively for the Anti-Doping Authorities. It is reasonable to assume that CAS Panel members do this in order to drum up more business for themselves. It is also a well known fact that members of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Court of Arbitration of Sport share the same people. Dick Pound was president of WADA while also serving on a CAS board. The conflict of interest of having the president of WADA acting as a board member of an "independent" CAS should be self evident.

What happens if the United States Federal Court accepts Landis' case, rules in his favor, and orders Steve Johnson to comply with the order to issue Floyd Landis a USA cycling racing license? What would happen then?

Something to ponder.