Doping #43 Waar de grote ronden in de rechtbank beslist worden.

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 16:02 schreef OProg het volgende:
Dat waren ook jaren dat bij de gezondheidscheck voor de tour renners niet mee mochten doen omdat hun hermatocriet spontaan ff boven de 50 kwam.
Ivanov was daar toen ook 1 van.

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 16:02 schreef OProg het volgende:
Het wielrennen rond 2000.

Dat waren ook jaren dat bij de gezondheidscheck voor de tour renners niet mee mochten doen omdat hun hermatocriet spontaan ff boven de 50 kwam.
Ivanov was daar toen ook 1 van.

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 09:07 schreef Steven184 het volgende:
Santi Perez was natuurlijk ook held in de Vuelta 2004

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 17:48 schreef Mani89 het volgende:
Of nog een paar jaar terug om te zien welke renners echt zelfmoord riskeerde door lekker door te spuiten tot ver boven de 60%.

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 17:48 schreef Mani89 het volgende:
Of nog een paar jaar terug om te zien welke renners echt zelfmoord riskeerde door lekker door te spuiten tot ver boven de 60%.

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Op zaterdag 11 februari 2012 00:02 schreef Waaghals het volgende:
Er zijn toch al heel wat renners in hun slaap overleden

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Op vrijdag 10 februari 2012 12:02 schreef franklop het volgende:

[..]

Fransen dopen niet

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Op donderdag 9 februari 2012 14:59 schreef franklop het volgende:
Poll op Sporza

Wie is de volgende die geschorst wordt door het TAS?
•Fausto Coppi
•Pedro Delgado
•Federico Bahamontes
•Gianni Bugno

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Suspicious call on Lance Armstrong
The surprise move to drop the investigation is odd. Plus, the Big East and West Virginia

Who doesn't love a good mystery chock-full of conspiracy theories and the possibility of political intrigue? When one of those babies pops into view from our Courtside Seat, you can bet we're paying attention. So last week's Lance Armstrong news made for must-see headlines in our little legal corner of the world. We'll get to the high cost of conference realignment a little later, but we start today with …

Above Below Suspicion
All of it is questionable, starting with the timing.

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Andre Birotte Jr., decided that the best possible time to make a major announcement about the federal investigation of Armstrong was late on the Friday afternoon before the Super Bowl. Is there a better time to hide news you don't want anyone to notice?

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GabrielL Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
Nothing says U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., left, has to explain the decision to drop the probe, but we're left without many answers if he doesn't.
Then there is the decision itself. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which has consistently led the news reporting on the investigation, the prosecutors and agents who worked on the case recommended to Birotte that he file criminal charges against Armstrong. The agents included investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service, and they were talking about mail fraud, drug distribution, money laundering and witness tampering.

The prosecutors in Birotte's office had prepared a formal written recommendation on the evidence that supported the suggested charges. Sources familiar with the agents' work told ESPN.com that the prosecutors and agents were interviewing witnesses as late as last Thursday and Friday, as Birotte scheduled his announcement. They were anticipating an indictment in a few weeks and had no idea that their two years of work was about to come to a sudden end.

So, like numerous reporters who had followed the probe, the agents and prosecutors were caught by surprise when Birotte announced - just as the nation's sporting press was focused on the final preparations for Super Bowl XLVI between the Giants and the Patriots in Indianapolis -- that he has closed the investigation.

Birotte's peremptory statement offered no explanation for the decision. His spokesman, Thom Mrozek, said only that "we cannot and will not discuss the internal deliberations" that led to it and that "the decision was made with a full and fair consideration of all the relevant evidence and law."

The Lance Armstrong Files

See more of ESPN's extensive coverage of Lance Armstrong here

Finally, there is the political speculation. As ESPN.com's Bonnie D. Ford noted in her insightful report on the day of Birotte's decision, Armstrong "retains a devoted constituency despite years of persistent questions about his character."

Ford used an interesting word -- "constituency" -- in this presidential election year. Armstrong is an authentic hero as the result of his battle with cancer, and there are 12 million cancer survivors in the U.S. Add millions of friends and family to the survivors, and you have a major constituency.

With critics already ripping the prosecutions of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens as wastes of government resources, an indictment of Armstrong might have been a thorny issue for President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder as the nation heads to the polls in November.

Was there political pressure to end the Armstrong probe? Did the decision come from the upper echelons of the Obama administration? We may never know. But there is no doubt about the political acumen of Armstrong and his team of lawyers and advisers.

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AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Lance Armstrong is popular enough, and perhaps powerful enough, to be a force in a number of different areas.
Consider, for example, Armstrong's gift of $100,000 to Planned Parenthood. The fact that the gift came on the same day as the U.S. attorney's announcement about the investigation is likely a coincidence, but it likely isn't a coincidence that the donation came in the middle of the flap over the decision by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to end its grants to Planned Parenthood. It puts Armstrong firmly in the camp of the pro-choice advocates who were appalled at the Komen decision, which has since been reversed. That timing offers a look at Armstrong's ability to act quickly and effectively in the middle of a political storm.

It also puts him on the side of the Obama administration on another explosive social issue, the recently announced requirement that all employers, including the Catholic Church and other charities, must provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilizations. The insurance requirement has long been an objective of Planned Parenthood.

That dramatic action from Armstrong and his foundation demonstrates their ability to navigate sensitive political situations. Purely speculation, of course, but it makes one wonder if it's possible that Armstrong and his people were able to apply any political pressure connected to the decision to drop the investigation.

When you reflect on these things -- the timing, the decision, the politics -- you might be excused for thinking they seem a bit suspicious.

When the Stars (Re)Align
In a time of economic turmoil and deep budget cuts, West Virginia University, a taxpayer-financed institution of higher learning, appears to be willing to pay $11 million or more to switch from the Big East Conference to the Big 12 Conference. Reports late this week are that the school and the conference are approaching a settlement in which West Virginia (with, apparently, help from the Big 12) will pay an extraordinary sum to settle two lawsuits over the realignment and move to the Big 12 this fall.

How did the school reach this point? Details are still sketchy, as no one is yet discussing the process publicly, but based on court papers and other public records, here is the story of WVU's expensive realignment decision:

On Oct. 17, 2011, the president of the university voted in favor of changes in the procedure that applies if a school decides to leave the Big East. Under the new rules, supported by WVU president James P. Clements and the other 15 university presidents in the conference, a school could leave the Big East only after a 27-month waiting period has expired and a $10 million payment has been submitted.

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AP Photo/David Smith
West Virginia president James Clements was tugging on a Big 12 hat a week and a half after he voted to bulk up the rules for leaving the Big East.
Ten days later, Clements and WVU received an invitation to join the Big 12 and almost instantly accepted the offer.

On the next day, 11 days after Clements voted for the new departure rules, he sent a registered letter to Big East Commissioner John Marinatto announcing West Virginia's withdrawal from the conference in eight months, offering a payment of $2.5 million.

The letter was terse and impersonal. The only rationale offered for the abrupt attempt to leave the conference was Clements' statement that "the Big East is no longer viable as a football conference" with the impending departures of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the ACC and Texas Christian to the Big 12. He did not mention that Pittsburgh and Syracuse had announced their intentions to follow the exit rules and participate in Big East competition for the entire 27-month waiting period. (TCU was exempt from the rules because it never followed through on its announced intention to join the conference.) The letter also didn't mention the invitation to join the Big 12.

Clements devoted more of his letter to the minutiae of a wire transfer of the $2.5 million than he did to further explain WVU's decision to abandon a conference where it had thrived for 12 years. He did promise to "work with [Marinatto] amicably regarding all the details" of the withdrawal.

Three days after the promise to "work amicably," Clements and WVU raced to the nearest courthouse and filed a lawsuit against Marinatto and the Big East, claiming that the conference suffered from "ineffective leadership" that resulted in the "denigration of Big East football."

The rules for departure from the Big East were not unknown to the West Virginia administration. According to court papers filed recently, Clements' predecessor, David C. Hardesty, a former Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law graduate, led an effort to establish "stability and certainty" in Big East membership that the conference lacked when Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech bolted the conference for the ACC in 2003.

Hardesty and the other Big East presidents adopted the 27-month waiting period to protect the Big East's ability to schedule seasons in 24 sports and to enter into contracts for televising football and men's basketball. A conference with a stable membership, Hardesty suggested, would be better for the athletes and, more importantly, would produce greater TV income.

In the pedantic manner you might expect of a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar, Hardesty said at the time of the adoption of the new withdrawal requirements that they were necessary "to strike a balance that puts our swords on the roundtable for a period of time that is reasonable and hooks us together contractually so that we have time to build up what we want to build up," according to the Charleston Daily Mail.

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AP Photo
That sign on the right might have been true at one point in time. But now? Maybe not so much.
In addition to Hardesty's leadership role in the attempt to achieve stability within the conference and its member schools, one of the other principal draftsmen of the new rules was Thomas Dorer, the general counsel of WVU.

The first version of the rules, adopted with the support of then-president Hardesty and the other school presidents, required the 27-month waiting period and a fine of $5 million. The second version, the one Clements supported 11 days before WVU's attempted withdrawal, raised the fee from $5 million to $10 million.

The WVU actions caused an increasingly acrimonious dispute that, at least until Thursday night's reported settlement, included litigation in Providence, R.I. (the headquarters of the Big East), and the WVU lawsuit in Morgantown.

Marinatto defined the most important legal issue in the dispute in a "Dear Jim" email that he fired back to Clements the day after he received the Clements withdrawal letter. In the email, now an exhibit in a brief filed in the Rhode Island lawsuit by the Big East, Marinatto reminded Clements that, under the rules Clements had supported, "the earliest date on which West Virginia could withdraw from the Big East is June 30, 2014."

In the final paragraph of his email, Marinatto played his trump card. He cited a section in the Big East bylaws -- Article 11.02(b) -- that was likely to be the basis for a court injunction that would stop WVU's attempt to withdraw from the conference as early as Clements would like.

The section was expressly and carefully written in anticipation of an attempt to leave the conference without complying with the withdrawal requirements. It states that any withdrawal without compliance with the 27-month waiting period and payment of the $10 million fee would cause "irreparable harm" to the conference. It's a provision that Hardesty and Dorer helped write. And it became the basis of the Big East's demand in a state court in Providence for an injunction stopping WVU's imminent withdrawal.

An injunction is the most drastic action a court can take in a civil lawsuit. It is a court order that tells a litigant that it must stop doing something it ordinarily would be permitted to do in a free society. Because of its dramatic effects, the requirements for an injunction are rigorous. There must be a realistic probability of "irreparable harm" before a judge can grant an injunction.

In most cases, it is difficult for the party demanding the injunction to prove there will be "irreparable harm." It's always a matter of argument. In many cases, a payment of monetary damages can compensate for any harm. In the bylaws twice supported by presidents of WVU and partially written by a WVU lawyer, the school agreed that its action would cause "irreparable harm." Without this week's settlement, it was going to make WVU's attempt to stop the injunction difficult.

In addition to the seemingly-ironclad language of the bylaws, the Big East enjoyed another formidable weapon: the law firm of Covington and Burling, a Washington, D.C.-based powerhouse that has represented the NFL for nearly 80 years and has more experience in high-stakes sports litigation than any other American firm.

The Covington firm has won big cases and lost big cases -- it was on the wrong side of a 9-0 decision against the NFL last year -- but its work is uniformly impressive and can be exhausting for its opponents. Ben Block, Covington's lead attorney for the Big East, was instrumental in defeating Maurice Clarett's attempt to duck the rule that requires three years of college before being eligible to play in the NFL, and he appeared to be well on his way to defeating WVU's attempt to duck the rule that requires a 27-month waiting period.

It is easy to see why WVU might be willing to pay the settlement -- reportedly a total of $20 million, with about $9 million of that coming from the Big 12 -- to buy its way out of a mess it created. Two of its presidents voted for the provision that WVU was trying to overturn to make the quick realignment that the school now wants.

The university's best hope, without the settlement, was some home cooking from a local judge. But the quick and effective work by the Big East and the Covington law firm made that increasingly unlikely, even a bit embarrassing.

Lester Munson, a Chicago lawyer and journalist who reports on investigative and legal issues in the sports industry, is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

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Fout in arrest- Contador?

Volgens het Spaanse sportblad As is er een fout geslopen in het arrest van het TAS dat Alberto Contador vorige week twee jaar schorste. Het blad haalt een anonieme getuige aan van het Arbitragehof, die bevestigt dat in het document sprake is van een controle op 20 juli, waar dat 21 juli zou moeten zijn. Volgens diezelfde getuige bestaat er echter een interne procedure om dat soort fouten te corrigeren.
Hoe dan ook zou die eventuele fout de Spanjaard in de kaart kunnen spelen. Hij kan immers alleen nog in beroep bij het Zwitsers Hooggerechtshof. Dat mag echter niet meer oordelen over de grond van de zaak, maar alleen over procedurefouten. Volgens Fran, de broer en makelaar van Contador, zijn ze niet zinnens om die foute datum aan te grijpen. De advocaten zijn er nog niet uit of ze al dan niet naar het Hooggerechtshof trekken.

Gisteren kwamen in Pinto, de woonplaats van Contador, meer dan tweeduizend mensen op straat om hun solidariteit te betuigen met hun geschorste held. (pdk)

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Op zaterdag 11 februari 2012 00:32 schreef Leatherface het volgende:
Ik gok dat er in de tijd van Oosterbosch in ieder geval nog niet zo veel bloeddoping was.

Het zat toen nog meer in de sfeer van anabole steroïden en amfetaminen, lijkt mij.

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Op maandag 13 februari 2012 08:14 schreef Steven184 het volgende:

[..]

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Op maandag 13 februari 2012 18:40 schreef Leatherface het volgende:
Maar deze spelfout is dus niet aan te vechten als vormfout bij het Zwitserse federale hof?

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Sportminister: Spanje heeft dopingprobleem

(Novum) - De Spaanse sportminister Jose Ignacio Wert vindt dat zijn land een dopingprobleem heeft dat opgelost moet worden. Dat zei hij dinsdag. Wert wil dat de antidopingwetgeving van zijn land aan de richtlijnen van de mondiale antidopingwaakhond WADA wordt aangepast. Volgens hem 'moet Spanje aan geloofwaardigheid winnen'.

Spanje is de laatste jaren het toneel geweest van een aantal grote dopingschandalen. In 2006 was er Operacion Puerto waarbij een groot aantal wielrenners betrokken zou zijn. Alejandro Valverde werd door een slimmigheid van het Italiaans olympisch comité CONI geschorst voor zijn aandeel, maar de Spaanse justitie deed weinig om de andere betrokkenen te vervolgen.

Ook wielrenner Alberto Contador werd in eerste instantie vrijgesproken van dopinggebruik, maar uiteindelijk werd hij door het sportarbitragehof CAS toch geschorst. Eind 2010 was er ook een dopingschandaal rond atletiektrainer Manuel Pascua.

http://sport.nieuws.nl/68(...)heeft_dopingprobleem

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Drugs in football? Pull the other one
February 16, 2012
0.7648236567620188
Off the Ball is an Irish radio show which airs at 7 O’Clock on Newstalk every weeknight. They cover most all sports and it’s a very entertaining show which regularly features big name guests.

Paul Kimmage often features, as does Nicolas Roche and they’ve even had UCI President Pat McQuaid on from time to time (although he refuses to appear on air at the same time as Kimmage).

Earlier this week, I was listening to the show as they were previewing the Bayer Leverkusen vs Barcelona match in the UEFA Champion’s League. As usual when discussing all things Barcelona, they had Scottish journalist Graham Hunter on as a guest.

Graham Hunter - loves Barcelona

Now Hunter might not be to everyone’s liking. He seems to get offended if anyone dares utter a negative word against Barcelona and he has regularly had on-air altercations with the show’s co-host Ken Early.

He has become so embedded with Barcelona and their to-defeat-us-is-an-insult-to-football attitude , that his objectivity must be questioned. But in general, he is a respected journalist who also regularly appears on Sky Sports discussing Spanish football.

But before the Leverkusen game on Tuesday, he was asked about midfield playmaker Xavi’s participation in the match and he said the following:

1. XaviGrowthHormone.mp3

So Xavi, one of the world’s best players regularly takes growth hormones, and Hunter didn’t seem bothered. He quickly moved on to discuss the form of Barcelona defender Gerard Pique.

Dr. Muller-Wohlfahrt uses 'homeopathic' methods

The Bayern Munich doctor that Hunter mentions is Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt. He is a controversial doctor who has been responsible for administering some controversial treatments such as injecting crushed pieces of the fleshy pink comb on a cockerel’s head into England cricket captain Michael Vaughan and injecting goat’s blood into sprinter Usain Bolt and England footballers Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard (among others).

This guy is football’s Eufemiano Fuentes.

But where are all the websites picking up this story? Where is the public outcry that Xavi, a player who has won all of the game’s major trophies in the last four years, is on drugs?

This past week has admittedly, been very bad for the image of cycling. The cases of three Tour de France winners all came to a head. Alberto Contador was banned for ‘two years’ and stripped of results, Jan Ullrich was also banned for ‘two years’ and stripped of results while the investigation into Lance Armstrong was dropped as the Texan remains as elusive as ever.

Mainstream media reporting on these stories I can understand, they are mainstream stories involving some of the cycling’s biggest ever names and cycling’s biggest race.

Football, football and more football

But why then do Sky Sports News feel the need to report on, for example, the disqualification of French track rider Gregory Baugé? They never think to report on Baugé when he wins a race.The only cycling related news that ever makes the headlines on this channel are when Team Sky win, or when someone (anyone) tests positive.

Sky Sports News spend about 45 minutes of every hour reporting on football. That’s over 30 hours of coverage (and counting) since Hunter revealed this information about Xavi taking growth hormones. Needless to say, they did not mention this revelation amongst their bloated, tiresome coverage of the UEFA Champion’s League, a trophy which Xavi won last year, as captain of Barcelona.

Earlier this year, a German T.V. show revealed that the winner of today’s stage of the Tour of Oman Marcel Kittel had undergone a blacklight treated blood transfusion. Kittel was forced to answer all sorts of doping-related questions. His Team 1T4i were also obliged to respond to the allegations (which they did so in an admirably diplomatic fashion).

Kittel described the experience as a nightmare and the worst day of his life. Xavi has experienced absolutely none of what Kittel went through.

The audio snippet above is akin to a cycling journalist such as Lionel Birnie revealing on a national radio show that he knows for a fact that Mark Cavendish takes EPO, but then move swiftly along to discuss Geraint Thomas’s qualities as a lead-out man.

But this is not cycling. This is football.

So nobody cares.

Irish Peloton

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Op vrijdag 17 februari 2012 11:01 schreef Steven184 het volgende:
Grappig stukje:

[..]

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Raad van State zet systeem van 'whereabouts' op de helling

De Raad van State heeft vorige week een arrest geveld met mogelijk belangrijke gevolgen voor het systeem van de 'whereabouts'. Het arrest vernietigt een Vlaams besluit uit 2008, waarbij de herziene Wereldantidopingcode van kracht werd. Volgens de Raad van State kan dat enkel bij besluit van de Vlaamse regering. Onder meer tennissers Xavier Malisse en Yanina Wickmayer kwamen al in de problemen door de 'whereabouts'.
De Wereldantidopingcode werd in november 2007 aangepast door het WADA. Daarbij kwam er een belangrijke verandering in het deel over de meldplicht van de sporters. Die moesten hun verblijfsgegevens nog meer detailleren met het oog op onaangekondigde dopingcontroles. De herziene WADA-code werd overgenomen in het besluit van 17 december 2008 van het Vlaams departement Sport, en trad vanaf 1 januari 2009 in werking.

Foute procedure

Vier advocaten, onder wie Johnny Maeschalck, dienden op vraag van een aantal elitesporters drie jaar geleden een beroep tot nietigverklaring van het besluit in. Zij krijgen nu voor een groot deel gelijk van de Raad van State, die in het arrest van 15 februari stelt dat het afdwingbaar maken van de WADA-code enkel kan bij besluit van de Vlaamse regering. Die moet daarvoor bovendien eerst advies vragen bij de afdeling wetgeving van de Raad van State.

Regelgeving

De bal ligt nu dus in het kamp van de Vlaamse regering en haar minister van Sport Philippe Muyters. 'Het is nog te vroeg om iets te zeggen over de gevolgen, maar onze juridische dienst is hier volop mee bezig', reageert communicatiemedewerkster Tinne Stukkens. 'We zijn echter al lang aan het werken aan een vernieuwde regelgeving rond whereabouts. We moeten het nog uitzoeken, maar mogelijk kunnen we de twee in elkaar laten passen, en zou die nieuwe regelgeving het arrest van de Raad van State dus kunnen opvangen. De administratie legt momenteel de laatste hand aan die nieuwe regelgeving.'

Bekende zondaars

De meest bekende 'whereaboutszaak' is die van tennissers Xavier Malisse en Yanina Wickmayer. Zij werden een jaar geschorst wegens fouten in hun verblijfsgegevens. In eerste aanleg werd die schorsing opgeschort waardoor het duo kan blijven tennissen, maar het is nog wachten op een definitieve uitspraak. Mogelijk zal het arrest van de Raad van State daarop implicaties hebben.

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