Kreuziger out of Tour. Bio irregularities.

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19638226#p19638226]gsk82[/url] wrote:

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19638181#p19638181]disgruntledgoat[/url] wrote:

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19638167#p19638167]frenchfighter[/url] wrote:

I'm obviously happy that Roman won his case against the UCI. Now I really want to sue those stupid people and we're looking into how to do it. They created a mess, a lot of mess. They damaged the name of my team and my brand but then suddenly they've dropped the case. We can't just let it go like that. Think about it. I paid Roman a lot of money but couldn't use in him last year's Tour de France. They have to be responsible for the damage they've done.

-Tinkoff

I used to work for a guy who once had us all do filing and tidying when there was a power cut so we could still "be productive". I've seen Tinkoff's type before

that would be the norm whever i've worked and we wouldn't need telling

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19638183#p19638183]frenchfighter[/url] wrote:

Umm. I wonder if they have told Tinkoff why they mysteriously dropped the case. You have to agree that the turn of events was highly irregular.

VN: We recently saw Tinkoff-Saxo rider Roman Kreuziger walk away from a bio-passport case, with the UCI and WADA dropping their case just as it was supposed to go before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That was the first time we’ve seen this happen. Kreuziger insisted he was innocent all along, and went to the Mayo Clinic to undergo tests that would prove the abnormalities in his bio-passport could have been caused by something other than blood doping. This is was unprecedented, and now, instead of facing a four-year ban, Kreuziger will be racing the Tour de France. You’re familiar with all parties involved — what’s your take?

JV: The first thing to understand is that the biological passport is an indirect testing method. It’s analogous to saying “there’s smoke over there, so there’s definitely fire.” That’s true a lot of times, but not always, and it’s using regression modeling to determine whether or not the statistical anomalies are large enough to indicate there was doping. Any time you are using an indirect testing method, from a legal standpoint, it’s incredibly open to interpretation. It’s the equivalent of, say, in a criminal case, saying, “Well I saw that guy enter a building, and one hour later there was a dead person in that building, therefore that guy killed that person.” Which could be true, or it could not be true, but it’s very precarious, legally. The UCI and WADA cannot afford to lose a bio-passport case, because if they do, it sets a precedent that makes it much easier to lose bio-passport cases moving forward.

VN: You don’t feel as though that’s what happened with the Kreuziger case?

JV: No, I think they dropped it because they had some sort of information that said, “OK, we’re right on the edge here.” If they lost it, it would kill the bio-passport entirely, so they probably decided, instead of killing it entirely, let’s just let this one go.

One common misinterpretation is that bio-passport’s most common use is to try to come up with positives based on fluctuating blood values. That’s probably how it used about five percent of the time. The other 95 percent of the time it is used to target people with highly suspicious values — to use standardized testing, over and over and over again, looking for anything from EPO to plasticizers, or to see if the person they are targeting is doping, and slips up, and they nail him, or if he is doping, and maybe the targeted testing gets him to stop. There are multiple possibilities there. But the primary use of the bio-passport is to target athletes.

With Kreuziger, they were going after an actual bio-passport case, which was considerably different than earlier ones. Earlier cases, from 2008 and 2009, and even the Jonathan Tiernan-Locke case, had values that had much greater fluctuations, from 45 hematocrit to 53. Kreuziger’s were more subtle. And you have to remember, there are sample-time issues — When was the sample taken? Was it taken before the stage, or after the stage? In that case, there were some samples that had been taken after the stage. There are things that we don’t even know about, for example, if a sample is left at room temperature for over a certain amount of time, the red blood cells actually expand, which changes the hematocrit value. This is completely conjecture, but maybe there was a sample that was left too long, and they looked at the lab technician’s notes, and it took an hour and 15 minutes before it was put through the machine, as opposed to 15 minutes, or whatever … there are so many issues — transportation, execution, sample collection — that never hit the public.

The blood profile is one little piece of what the bigger picture actually is. I would imagine that the UCI came up with something that they felt was not 100 percent provable. And, unfortunately, for people who are advocates for clean cycling, it’s always, in my opinion — and this is Jeffersonian — better to let 100 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent person. I don’t know if Kreuziger was innocent or guilty. I have no idea. What I do know is that giving someone a four-year suspension — which, in cycling, is basically a lifetime suspension — you better be very sure. Because the first time an innocent person gets a lifetime suspension, that’s tragic. It’s unfortunate if a few dirty athletes sneak through the system, but a clean guy, out of the sport, who was totally innocent — that’s tragic. I think the UCI and WADA have to be aware of that. And they are.


http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/07/news/a-conversation-with-cannondale-manager-jonathan-vaughters-part-2_375916#2Let3YZepDoMIpA2.99