johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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Ignore this, but Merry Christmas!
Yeah, the entries are getting a bit close together, but right now it's 9:42 P.M. and I'm really excited for the first time in ages. And yes, it's over something so screwy that only a small number of pro cycling fans could find it exciting. The rest of this will be about athletes and fairness, so by all means skip it, and Merry Christmas to you, but I need to write it out.
You know I'm an Alberto Contador fan, and you know that he tested positive for the tiniest bit of a banned substance called Clenbuterol. The "tiniest bit" part isn't a fan's interpretation - lab are only required to be able to find forty times the amount that turned up in his sample one day.
He was notified at the end of August, but wasn't even allowed to tell his parents, who he sees every day, about it for a month. He had to put his trust in the evil cycling union, and suffer alone. Then the German lab leaked the positive to a journalist, and all Hell broke loose. Alberto was assaulted time and again in the press, with people accusing him of all sorts of things. It just kept coming, and was repeated around the world.
I'll skip a bunch, but he says helost hair from worry, and he had to stay up all night watching TV, or go night fishing, or play hour after hour of basketball and soccer, just to exhaust himself so he might sleep. His team stopped paying him, and he became a bit of a recluse as he built his defence, claiming a piece of meat bought in Spain was contaminated (they use clenbuterol in cattle to help them gain lean weight, but it's banned in the EU, but it's still really possible, especially since they import meat from South America). When he wasn't attacked by cycling people, he was attacked by various organizations in the beef industry.
The cycling group and the international anti-doping groups took two months with their best scientists and their best labs, trying to build an air tight case against him. They submitted 600 pages of scientific documents to the Spanish cycling federation. It's their job to look at those, and the studies and things Contador's lawyers submitted, and make the first decision about guilt or innocence. But everyone believes that if they find in his favor, the other groups will take it to the sports arbitration group, which could delay things for months. As it stood the other day, he expected to wait in limbo for another month for the Spanish decision, then either hhe or the groups would appeal. He had no idea when he would race again, or start to get his reputation back. At least he stopped talking about retiring, for now.
But there are still people who want to take away his Tour de France win and kick him out of the sport for two years because of a "strict liability" rule about any amount of this substance. He's the most famous athlete involved, but others have had cases with the same substance. It's legal for use in cattle in South America, and in heavy use in Mexico and China. Spain says it doesn't exist there, but a whole ring devoted to the substance was busted.
People like a German table tennis player have proved that they didn't cheat, it got into their system by contamination. He did a hair test and anything. He was told that yes, we believe you are completely innocent, and you've proved it, but our piece of paper says you need to be punished anyway. We'll cut you a break and only steal one year of your career. And people in cycling forums were totally cool with that.
Yesterday or the day before, Spanish representatives of pro tennis and basketball raised a fuss, saying they had people at approved labs tell them that food contamination was very possible, and demanded to know how to protect their athletes against the strict liability, which they said was illegal. Some athletes were refusing to compete in South America because they didn't want to risk high legal costs and two years of their career by eating. They appointed someone to take it to WADA and complain that since there's such a good chance of people ingesting it in food, they need to set a minimum threshold so that only people who took enough to cheat will be punished, not the ones with just a trace.
I was pretty calm after that one, because the story was widely publicized, and it backed up what I've been arguing all along against guys at the bike forum.
A while ago, I saw the article out of Spain that has me excited. Athletes are upset about these people being found innocent but punished anyway. They want to fight for some rule changes, and they're organized. Athletes have to report into a computerized Whereabouts system called ADAMS for every day, so they can be found for surprise drug tests. But as a first step in the protest, at least 25,000 athletes are going to leave a blank for Christmas Day. They're just going off the grid. They're opening themselves up to possible punishment, but an organization that would punish 25,000 athletes might as well...well, it would be something if it happened.
Contador's photo was with the article. If they can get this changed, and protect the previous and future athletes, maybe Alberto will feel a bit better about the Hell he's gone through. But there are two too-powerful organizations accountable to no one, and at least one of them is about to be called on it. Hell freaking yeah. My hope is that the battle will be active, and the rules will be changed before Spain rules on Contador. Then they could find him innocent, and he'd get his life back immediately.
I'm washing my hands of the know it alls at the forum. Let them argue about a 25,000 athlete protest.
10:21 p.m. - Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010
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