Who Else?

LangerDan

If the UCIs concealment of the 2001 TdS positive turns out to be true, who else over the years would have benefitted from such an arrangement?

At the time of the 2001 TdS, Lance had won "just" two Tours and hadn't yet become the commercial monster to which many later hitched their financial wagon. So the arguments about access to the US market don't fully apply yet.
So why would the UCI wake up one morning and decide to go out on a limb and cover up a positive in return for a sack of cash. Or was Lance just availing of a high-cost service that was was already in place? Is the fact that over recent years, several big (and presumably cash-rich) names have been nabbed indicate that such a scheme was wound back as WADA took a greater interest in affairs.

On a separate but related matter, my understanding of the process following an adverse analytical finding (AAF) by a lab is that it goes before a panel who can relate the sample code to a rider and thus identify him. They then look to see if, for example, the rider in question has a relevant TUE or if there are extenuating circumstances for the AAF. If not, the rider is declared positive. Does any know how many AAFs go on to become actual positives? Are there lab personnel who are aware of significant numbers of AAFs that never materialise as "positives"?


Or is this more properly the domain of "The Asylum"?

iainf72

Anyone at the top level would've been a suspect.

I do wonder if the corruption is in the labs though. How many pairs of wooden Gucci shoes could Hein possibly need?

Also, could Armstrong be a different case because of the cancer thing, where it should've shown up in doping tests, it didn't, for whatever reason and this gives him leverage over the UCI. Perhaps the cash was for the UCI to "compensate" the lab?

Kléber

Armstrong won the race that year. Here's the top 10:
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 35.00.06
2 Gilberto Simoni (Ita) Lampre-Daikin 1.02
3 Wladimir Belli (Ita) Fassa Bortolo 1.34
4 Beat Zberg (Swi) Rabobank 2.47
5 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) Team Deutsche Telekom 2.48
6 Georg Totschnig (Aut) Gerolsteiner 2.58
7 Juan Manuel Garate (Spa) Lampre-Daikin 3.30
8 Manuel Beltran Martinez (Spa) Mapei-Quick Step 3.37
9 Laurent Jalabert (Fra) CSC-World Online 3.46
10 Daniel Schnider (Swi) La Francaise Des Jeux 5.51

The same lab had been "testing" for EPO before, using an unvalidated test to get a rough idea of how many riders were on EPO and the figure was exceptionally high. This screening was part of the process to develop the test.

As for the "why cover it up", well it seems to have been a borderline case. Maybe it was never a positive, just a "we're pretty sure you're doping but can't prove it" deal?

LangerDan

If there was a "cash for no questions" scheme in operation- which may shortly be exposed - would that help explain why a shiny-headed Dane, who should have nothing to fear from a US Federal investigation, is apparently in a state of anxiety.

Doobz

there could be hundreds.. Remember when berties positive was leaked to the media he reacted by saying the UCI told him to keep it quiet..

knedlicky

LangerDan wrote:

At the time of the 2001 TdS, Lance had won "just" two Tours and hadn't yet become the commercial monster to which many later hitched their financial wagon. So the arguments about access to the US market don't fully apply yet.
So why would the UCI wake up one morning and decide to go out on a limb and cover up a positive in return for a sack of cash. Or was Lance just availing of a high-cost service that was was already in place?

Having worked and socialised with many sport-interested Americans between 2001-2006, and hearing what they had to say, and what the US media reported about then about Armstrong, I would say you under-estimate his commercial impact on the US market as early as 2000-2002.

I don’t know if UCI operated a similar service already, but I somehow doubt it – rather I suspect up to the late 1990s it was a case of the detection techniques and interest lagging behind, albeit perhaps intentionally.
In the case of LA, though, I think he probably had a definite plan (as is often the American way) and when instances occurred which might disrupt that plan, he approached the UCI with a tempting arrangement to keep it on course.

LangerDan wrote:

On a separate but related matter, my understanding of the process following an adverse analytical finding (AAF) by a lab is that it goes before a panel who can relate the sample code to a rider and thus identify him ... .
Does any know how many AAFs go on to become actual positives? Are there lab personnel who are aware of significant numbers of AAFs that never materialise as "positives"??

With respect to AAFs, I wrote the following in a post a couple of weeks ago, maybe it answers some of what you meant?

“Previously, what was (eventually and discretely) publicly released were estimates, by the Lausanne laboratory who did/do a lot of the (especially EPO) testing, of how many riders ‘may have’ doped, based on ‘suspicious’ but not condemning test results.
Their estimates were broken up into the 3 weeks of the Tour, so for example in 2001, the lab felt that early on in the Tour doping was negligible, but in the last week it occurred amongst the better-placed, as the possible prizes became visible (probably happens every year).

The Lausanne laboratory estimates of how many riders ‘may have’ doped vary from 80% in 1996 to 15-20% in 2001-2002, then back up to 50% in 2004-2005 then down to 20-25% in 2006-2007 (I haven’t seen any estimates since then).”