PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
AFAIK that's not true: this is the first action brought by USADA. There have been other attempts by other bodies, but this is the first by USADA. Anyway, I didn't say he was bailing at the first hint of action - not his style. He certainly has, with the backing of UCI, tried (through his legal team) to question USADA's competence/jurisdiction in the case. He failed in that attempt when a US federal court recently dismissed his case. His latest statements, of course, don't dwell on this aspect.
See the previous point: AFAIK this is the first case brought by USADA. As to your other point, you don't know who the 10 USADA witnesses are, so dismissing them all as known crooks might seem excessive at this stage. There are rumours that they include respected people like Hincapie (who has never tested positive). Besides, plea bargaining is a well-established practice in the US legal system.
Nothing bizarre about it. Your defense of LA was that if everybody is doing it and nobody is getting caught, then it's OK and the anti-doping guys should go home. You are now suggesting a US agency is corrupting witnesses testifying under oath: pretty serious allegation, to put it mildly.
Yes, the body in question ruled all OK, nothing to see here, ride on.
You're also right that I've never worked in a lab environment (not exactly one of my career priorities, TBH) but you will notice that I haven't said that screwed up samples should be valid for use in a court case. Besides the interesting nyvelocity article put up by Paul R and foxwelljsly (the second one) makes the point that the samples were actually not corrupted. The Australian doping expert interviewed in that article concludes he has no doubt in his mind that LA was using EPO in 1999. But these tests were conducted many years after the event.
It seems that it has been relatively easy for a well-organized team to test clean: EPO has a short half life, some of the designer drugs are hard to detect, transfusions can be masked, and some athletes seem to have enjoyed certain privileges when it comes to testing protocols (like 20' in the shower unattended or hard to find addresses). Cheaters only get caught when they make a mistake. Rather than just focusing on the vials and catching people red-handed, USADA has approached the matter through testimonials and circumstantial evidence. Nothing shocking about that: it happens in trials all the time when there is no smoking gun.
The defense of "never tested positive" is constantly trotted out. It was used by Marion Jones all the time, with some reason: she never failed a test either, despite confessing later to systematic doping (she had one positive towards the end of her career in 2006, but the B sample was negative, so case closed). The only thing it proves is that the team has a rigorous program. Come to think of it, Marion Jones was only really caught because she ran out of money and was involved in a check scam: despite being fingered in the BALCO investigation in 2004, being accused by Victor Conte (head of BALCO) as being one of his clients and by her then-husband who described her doping, she got away for several more years: "never failed a drug test". The case against her relied on circumstantial evidence and accusations from dodgy characters like Conte and Hunter. Here again, the USADA and federal investigators were persistent. Jones only folded when confronted with the check scam (2007) and accused of perjury. Do you seriously believe Marion Jones did not dope? ("yebbut Armstrong has not confessed so this is a lousy parallel")
Perjury in a federal investigation is serious: Marion Jones went to jail for it. I believe this is a big part of why Armstrong has just thrown in the towel, but this is just speculation for now. More facts will come out in the next 6 to 12 months (USADA have said they will go public once the cases against Bruyneel et alia are over). In the meantime, if you want to believe Armstrong has never doped, you are of course perfectly entitled to that point of view.
