Les Surprises d'Octobre

This post is carried simultaneously at

WADAwatch.blogspot.com and crystelZENmud.blogspot.com

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What a week we'll be witnessing, from outside closed doors...

Conclusion? A Mirror...

In the heart of France, on the 22^nd and 23^rd of October, the French Minister for Sport and Youth, Madame-Docteur Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, is going to be cracking heads, or hearts, as she hosts within the walls of the French Committé Olympique, a closed-door 'High Level Summit on Doping in Cycling”.

As meager as the press coverage has been, attendance is apparently limited to officials representiing: WADA, cycling's three Grand Tours (Giro d'Italia, Tour de France (owned by the group ASO), Vuelta de Espagne), the French Cycling Federation, the Agence Française du Lutte contre le Dopage (AFLD), and 'others', perhaps of European governments, the IOC, etc. Some 150 total participants should be sipping Evian or a fine Bordeaux, while discussing the ramifications of certain contrasting actions that have been digested over this last amazing year of 2007.

A snapshot of noteworthy items would have to include:

a: the ASO-instigated fight against inclusion of the UCI ProTour team UNIBET.com in the lineup of teams competing in the spring race 'Paris-Nice';

b: the revelations produced in the Floyd Landis hearings, from his allegedly positive 2006 TdF test for testosterone use, which implicated the French testing lab LNDD for its multitudinous lapses, in the application of standard international rules defining sports-doping test procedures;

c: the pre-Tour de France exclusion of Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, as a result of lingering suspicions centered on the curious Operacion Puerto affair in Spain, and its attention on the career of Dr. Fuentes;

d: the tardy (yet hope-filled) confessions of Bjarne Riis and Erik Zabel, of their EPO use in 1996, while under the Deutsche Telekom team colors;

e: the near-daily revelations, during the second and third weeks of the 2007 Tour de France, of rider's pre-Tour infractions, such as Michael Rasmussen, the Danish racer who wore the Yellow Jersey, accused of missing mandated testing procedures by the infraction of not informing the Union Cycliste Internationale of his pre-Tour whereabouts, the properly-delayed but annoying (to Tour director Christian Prudhomme, and ASO president Patrice Clerc) announcement of German rider Patrik Sinkewitz' positive test for testosterone, another in-Tour test for blood transfusion, that was brought against Kazakh rider Alexandre Vinokourov, then another positive test, which implicated an Italian rider for a French cycling team – Cristian Moreni – and for all of these envenomed the excruciating relations between the TdF/ASO and the UCI

f: recent news that the French Agency AFLD would reinstate its own litigation against Floyd Landis, creating an unprecedented and highly suspect 'double jeopardy' situation of two sports-arbitration cases for one test at one event under one set of (UCI) rules, due to the potentially- devastating news that the next year's Tour de France may not be run under the auspices of the UCI.

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So once again, this week?

Monday and Tuesday, the above-named players will be meeting for their closed-door session, in the midst of other unfolding news-items.

The biggest one on the sports-doping radar screen, come from the sour-grapes pronouncements of Jean-Pierre Lamour, who's anticipated reign as the Second 'Grand Inquisitor' of WADA (succeeding President Dick Pound of Canada) was nixed by a considerable candidate's presentation: former Australian government Minister John Fahey, whose candidature was abruptly promoted by a meeting of the WADA Executive Committee nearly a month ago.

Lamour will probably be there; whether Fahey is invited remains to be seen.

Monsieur Lamour, apparently as cocky as was Dick Pound during the greater part of his reign, let fly a few news-IED bombs as loud as the door he slammed against his own backside. Insinuations he offered included hints that WADA was taking a 'ten year leap backward', that 'WADA was about to open the door to greater 'flexibility' through its CODE revisions, and most importantly, that he would potentially become involved in a new, European-centered anti-doping agency that would not suffer the problems inherent in WADA.

Talk about the love of a minister scorned... remembering that it was J-F Lamour himself, that was the French Minister of Sport and Youth, whose Ministry oversaw the LNDD lab during both the unseemly 'Armstrong case' and the 'Affaire Landis', and whose Ministry was both antagonistic towards the UCI investigation of the Armstrong case, AND was under suspicion during and after these, as a source of the leaks to the journal l'Equipe regarding these and other leaks of 'A Sample' test results.

Other amazing moments came out in a recent (September 18, 2007) interview in Cyclingnews.com, where Patrice Clerc was all over the game board in discussing how offended was his company, the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), by the attitude and actions of the UCI, with whom the 'Grand Tours' have been battling all the issues surrounding the inception of the ProTour cycling concept, initiatives of the UCI (including this year's UNIBET.com French court case, their (above) exclusion from the Paris-Nice and Tour de France events, and the doping issues.

Unfortunately Monsieur Clerc has no memory, nor apparently any desire to discuss, those endless leaks of doping revelations that stem from the ASO-owned newspaper l'Equipe, the French national sporting journal. Had he been honest with himself and with Cyclingnews.com (who should themselves be hanging their heads for not asking about this issue), he might have addressed these constant leaking incidents, that undermine any Athletes' rights of privacy and process, specifically in the case where l'Equipe published its 2005 article, timed for two weeks after the end of the Tour de France, entitled 'Les Mensonges d'Armstrong', which insinuated that Lance was on EPO in 1999.

And as those leaks came from either the French Ministry (which controls the LNDD laboratory – thus whether that equates with one or two entities is a secondary thought), or WADA, both of whom are key players in the fight against doping in sport, to l'Equipe, there is ample grounds to suspect that there is a bit of 'cover-me, cover-you' corruption that belies the strident WADA message about 'harmonizing the battle against doping in sport': a foundation of the fundamental message found in the Introduction to the WADA CODE.

The practical substance of these revelations, including the great interactions with the French Ministry-sponsored conference, the AFLD second-spin Landis-doping case, the Lamour/Fahey/WADA dénouement, all creating an implosive whirlpool at the very heart, and future, of cycling itself.

But all of the outlined points, above steer us only to the early part of the week; later, on October 25^th, is the usual annual announcement of next year's 2008 Tour de France route. Reading Patrice Clerc's interview, with the discussions of the impossibility of working with the UCI, mentions of national teams and other doping agencies' involvement, leaves the average cycling fan whirling and wondering if all of it is worth the price of sustained interest by the sports-consumer?

Given what you've read above, the amalgam of these events symbolizes something that is bedrock-shattering. A point not to be missed in the evolution of this week is that, unlike many other sports, cycling has had a long history of 'airing its dirty laundry' in public, with every opportunity for the sporting press to make cycling into a laughing stock, while it could be presented legitimately as the one sport that is suffering the most, while undertaking the greatest effort to clean its own ranks.

Soon, members of these entities, present at these meetings, in Paris, Madrid and elsewhere, will have an opportunity to prove their love for cycling, or their love of their own inflated and destructive egos.

Whether they choose to do, that which the world could proudly remember them for their involvement, or that for which the world would sadly remember their involvement, remains to be seen, very soon.

Thus: A MIRROR...

... is the best thing that every participant to these 'Summit' meetings could bring to the table, to remind themselves:

“I am watching my own professional actions, as is the world, for whom I work at this table.”

Courage

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç

WADA do about L'EQUIPE?? BOYCOTT!!!

ZENfriends:

There comes a time when the people of a country must rise against the oppression...

Doesn't sound like we're talking about a Sports-newspaper? Well, in France the tradition to take to the streets is omnipresent, and with the latest scandal-ridden spew published by L'Equipe, the French journal that was the original sponsoring paper behind the Tour de France, the farce continues...

Floyd Landis, valiant and memorable victor of the 2006 Tour de France, has been spared no pain in the on-going witch-hunt produced by the following listed entities:

LNDD: the French Laboratoire nationale du dépistage du dopage;

WADA: the World Anti-Doping Agency;

USADA: the United States Anti-Doping Agency;

L'EQUIPE: French sporting journal.

My various in-depth articles have described in depth how each of these agents has individually failed to officiate over any process of drug-testing, based on what is happening to Floyd Landis.

See:

Part One: WADA do about Floyd???

Part Two: WADA do about Floyd???

Part Three: WADA do about Floyd???

As well as these other subsequent, sequentially-listed articles:

FLOYD GOES FREE under the Pound Doctrine (March 7, 2007)

How not to Laugh with Floyd... Landis (March 8, 2007)

WADA do about WADA? (March 21, 2007)

WADA do about the (Landis) Chain of Evidence? (March 21, 2007)

Pound's new CRUSADE against justice in SPORT (March 22, 2007)

WADA do about Strict Liability... (April 5, 2007)

WADA do about USADA??? (April 13, 2007)


WADA has failed, the LNDD has failed, and the USADA also has; in its quest for success, the US taxpayer-financed Organization, has failed to protect the rights of a falsely-accused (so this legally-trained author believes) cyclist/athlete.

The ongoing case, slated for a hearing in two weeks, on May 14th, took a bizarre twist with the request by USADA for further 'B Sample' testing of remaining Landis urine samples, using IRMS technology designed to discern exogenous testosterone.
(Jacques de Ceaurriz, director of LNDD, Jean-François Lamour, and Colette Besson, president of CA; photo from French Gov't)

Any OBJECTIVE person may think, that with a Laboratory under the gun for past ... well 'shoddy' is the most scientific term I can think of... past shoddy work, with numerous errors at hand, well: that the USADA would have a compromise venue, another laboratory possessing a reputation of total integrity, to perform these 'longitudinal' studies, which could serve to allow a graphic display of Landis' naturally fluctuating Testosterone levels.

Didn't happen that way.

OH! Did I forget to mention, that the French l'Equipe has leaked each very prominent rider's result produced by LNDD? In every case presented to the Lab, in contravention (as to the Lab) of a WADA 'Code of Conduct', which places the strictest confidence on the Lab?

Here's what Netherlands attorney Emile Vrijman said about L'Equipe, writing about its collusion in the Lance Armstrong fiasco of 2005:

The investigator does not know how the research reports of the LNDD came into the possession of Mr. Ressiot, the journalist of L’Equipe. These reports however, must have been provided either by the LNDD, the Ministry or WADA, as WADA and the Ministry had received copies of reports drafted and sent by the LNDD. The investigator regrets the lack of cooperation of these three bodies. It is clear that only a thorough investigation within each of them might find the answer to this important question, that affects the confidence that athletes, ADO’s and the public are entitled to have in these bodies. (UCI Vrijman report, p.121: para 5.1)

So when l'Equipe published Monday (in FR), its most recent leak on the Landis case, its article was totally slanted towards erasing the memory of Landis' (as well as Lance Armstrong's) accusations of malfeasance:

"Floyd Landis, qui s'est évertué depuis plusieurs mois à décrédibiliser le laboratoire français, aura bien du mal, cette fois-ci, à user de cet argument : les nouvelles analyses, effectuées la semaine dernière et clôturées ce week-end, ont été réalisées en présence de deux experts désignés par le coureur américain, et de deux représentants de l'USADA."

[Floyd Landis, who has for several months lost all virtue in trying to discredit the LNDD, will have some illness, this time, to use the same argument again: these new analyses, which took place last week and finalized this last weekend, were undertaken in the presence of two experts designated by the American racer, and two representatives of the USADA.]

The article claimed that Landis' experts, as called-for in the WADA and USADA regulations, were to be allowed full and complete access to all aspects of the testing...

That is not what Floyd's named experts are claiming.

IF
... the world depends on one journalistic, European voice, for the source of the most important information from the world of cycling, that source IS the French l'Equipe;

IF
... the voice of that paper, its authority, its staff, is rank with the festering wounds of losing circulation, odoriferous with the pus of leaks, incapable of registering right from wrong, whether by potentially paying for information or providing a government sponsored and sanctioned violation of the WADA CODE and the ISL Code of Ethics;

IF
... the accusing French laboratoire in which Floyd Landis has been 'found abnormal in ratio of Testosterone to Epitestosterone', has failed in prior occasions to uphold standards, the failure of which is potentially a violation;


Then the boycott of l'Equipe should be organized, its reporter Ressiot should be dismissed, as a call to the sensibilizing of the sport to the science that is not as far into the cutting-edge as certain Pounds, or de Ceaurriz' (Director of the LNDD) might have indicated.

And the implementation of the investigation that would decide on a sudden, necessary dis-accreditation of the French LNDD lab should be initiated by WADA, as requested already by two Olympic Federations, the President of the ASOIF, and the President, IOC Athletes Commission, whose letter was a forceful but neglected request to WADA to rectify the errors of LNDD.

Please consider:

Ending Floyd's career is only justifiable if he was doping.

Ending the careers of reporters who buy or repeatedly acquire leaked confidential (think of YOUR doctor's records?!!) information, and their associated 'Confidential info Dealers/Leakers located variously in French governmental divisions, or in world-renowned Intergovernmental or international non-governmental organizations (WADA, USADA or UCI), is a much more noble goal.

Ending ambiguity, as seen in many articles of WADA's several controlling documents, is also the worthiest task ahead, for parties that represent the falsely, or 'inacurately' accused,such as the Alan Baxters of the world, or Floyd Landis.


When the Police need to be policed by those who are 'protected', then the wobbling imbalance may be too gone, too radically far to re-direct.

WADA already has signs of Roid-rage and overexertion, as directed now by Dick Pound, and (if rumours are true) to be directed by the French Minister of Sport Jean-François Lamour after November 2007.

Due to its haste to install itself as the top-pissing wolf in the Sports Forest... its future is now cast in doubt, as Machiavellian aspects, similar to the Bush-invasion of Iraq, now are riding Floyd Landis into a clear contest of evidence, of will and political support.

Floyd needs your objective and clear opinions.


COURAGE, Floyd - Champion of the Tour de France 2006

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç