Cycling: Doping Femme Fatale?

Just when you thought the doping news was on the wane, unexpected things happen. Jeanne Longo, the French female cycling sensation withdraws from the UCI Road World Championships after allegations that her husband and coach Patrice Ciprelli was linked to a purchase of rEPO in 2007. To make matters worse, the French Cycling Federation (FFC) has reported that Jeanne Longo has missed three random out-of-competition drug tests because her whereabouts were unknown. The FFC has announced that they are considering disciplinary action that may result in a two year suspension.

Does it not seem suspicious that a fifty two year old woman is trouncing young twenty something femme fatales, in their primes, at the height of their athletic abilities, in a time trial, with a normal physiology? Doubtful. In any event, this episode reminds me of Michael Rasmussen, who missed random out-of-competition tests, misreported his whereabouts, and then was fired by Rabobank during the 2007 Tour de France while wearing the malliot jaune. Michael Rasmussen was and then suspended for two years by the Monaco Cycling Federation. The Michael Rasmussen suspension was affirmed by the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) on appeal. And under normal conditions the fate of Jeanne Longo seems certain, but...

These are strange days. WADA has gone off the deep end by admitting that athletes can be contaminated by performance enhancing drugs without wilful intent to increase performance. This accidental contact seems to be limited to a single drug, clenbuterol: a drug that theoretically could be transmitted from a contaminated beef stake into an athlete by ingestion. However, this hypothetical contamination by ingestion argument is not shared by all biochemists, some experts have reported that for a beef stake to infect an athlete, the concentration of clenbuterol present in the meat would be toxic enough to kill the athlete.

Well, this is certainly a curious argument and one wonders why WADA would suddenly consider a single anabolic steroid beyond the Richard Young standard of strict liability. One wonders if there is not some conflict of interest involved here. Perhaps the motive is to protect a single athlete? Never, in all the years of the current anti-doping Inquisition, has a single athlete escaped the wrath of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), WADA, and the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS). Never have the powers relented and accepted a rational argument in a humane fashion under the declaration of human rights.

Until now! It should be obvious to everyone that WADA and the UCI never had any interest in appealing the Spanish Sport Federation (RFEC) exoneration of Alberto Contador. Now, WADA wants to exempt clenbuterol from the strict liability requirement before his case is heard before the CAS....where under appropriate pressure there is a high probability that the case will be dismissed.

Why? Because WADA wants only one disgraced Tour de France champion who will live in infamy for doping...the son of a poor American Mennonite farmer, Floyd Landis: a man who was vilified in the most inhumane way by WADA, USADA, the UCI, and the CAS. Unfortunately, during that period they were burning one hundred heretics a day at the stake during the splendid auto de fe.

But, when a European prince is accused of wrong doing and faces certain expulsion, WADA has suddenly abandoned the stake in the interests of humanity. Ye reek of hypocrisy.

Behind me hence, Satan. If I were running the UCI, association with the IOC and their maniacal satellites would terminate henceforth. The IOC thinks that the UCI and many nation states can be blackmailed and forced to comply with their agenda as signatories; their threat? submit or be excluded from Olympic athletic competition. I would call their bluff, begone! cycling would end the incestuous relationship with WADA. WADA accredited laboratories would be excluded from all cycling testing, including Tour de France testing, and replaced with competent testing laboratories from internationally accredited organizations independent of WADA and the IOC. Appeals of decisions of national cycling federations would be directed to an arbitration panel independent of WADA. If, in retaliation, the IOC decided to eliminate all cycling sport from the Olympics as punishment, the UCI would encourage outraged cycling fanatics to demand that the sport of cycling be returned to it's rightful place in the pantheon. Then the UCI would demand that the IOC publicly apologize to the riders and their supporters, then demand that the IOC make further concessions.

If the national cycling federations insist upon protecting their favorite sons with outrageous exoneration of "clear laboratory results" then the UCI would be responsible for the direction of the final appeal to an judicial review board independent of the UCI, the IOC, and their alphabet soup affiliates. Got it?

Good. And don't even think of doing Jeanne Longo any special favors!