Mayo Debacle reaches a satisfactory conclusion

Today the Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) made one of the best decisions a governing body of cycling has made in recent years. They have declared they will not investigate the doping case against Iban Mayo (Saunier Duval) any further, meaning that he is clear to race in the 2008 season. It would be wrong to suggest that the author of this blog does not have a strong anti-doping stance; however, this case has been horribly handled by the UCI and if RFEC did decide to investigate, it would have been a gross miscarriage of justice.

The case began with Mayo's non-negative "A" sample test from last year's Tour de France, which was tested
at the Châtenay-Malabry lab in France. This is the same lab which came under serious scrutiny after allegations arose that it mishandled Floyd Landis' samples after the 2006 Tour de France. Mayo requested that the "B" sample be tested, and it was, at a laboratory in Ghent, Belgium. The Ghent lab said that the test on the "B" sample was inconclusive, and in most cases this would mean that the charges would be dropped.

However, the UCI, fearing that this would seriously damaged the credibility of the Châtenay-Malabry lab, sent it back to the same lab to test the "B" sample again. Now, I am no expert in the science of drug controls, but it wouldn't seem like a good idea to retest the same sample multiple times. More importantly, why would the UCI send it back to the same lab whose credibility was questioned if they didn't want to cover for that lab? Obviously, if the UCI had sent it to another lab, say the UCLA lab, and they had confirmed the Ghent lab's result, this would have shattered the credibility of the Châtenay-Malabry lab and damaged the case against Floyd Landis, both of whose samples were tested there. Naturally, the UCI announced that the French lab's result was a non-negative.

In short, I feel that the Châtenay-Malabry lab needs to have not only a complete personnel review in the wake
of several leaks to the French sports daily L'Equipe, but it needs to be stripped of its UCI accreditation until it has done a full review of all its operations. Morover, the head of the UCI's anti-doping department, Anne Gripper, needs to be fired, and the UCI President, Pat McQuaid, needs to be impeached or forced out. They have been the central figures in this witch hunt of Iban Mayo. They have lost all credibility in my eyes, and I cannot take anything they say seriously any more. Not only is McQuaid an incompetent fool and an idiot in his dealings with the Grand Tour organizers (ASO, RCS, and Unipublic) with regards to the ProTour, he has led two attempts by the UCI to destroy riders' credibility and livelihood based on suspicious, at best, testing procedures at labs with vested interests in non-negative results.

I have no more time for stupid organization and incompetence at the UCI. We, the fans, want to win this war on doping, and we want to win it the right way. We want to catch the cheats, but only the cheats. There need not be any "collateral damage" in the War on Drugs. McQuaid seems to think that by going after lots of high-profile riders using suspect evidence, young riders will be too scared to get within 100 meters of an EPO syringe. If anything, his actions will only discourage young riders from looking to go pro, which will seriously damage the quality of professional cycling around the world. I, for one, would be much less likely to become a professional (if I had the talent) because of McQuaid's witch hunt.

The bad news in this story is, however, that the UCI has appealed RFEC's decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. This is another stupid move by McQuaid & co. because even if CAS does side with them, it has no means by which to force RFEC to investigate the case. In that case, RFEC should refuse to investigate and the national federations should break away from the UCI. It is not the head of cycling, that is the fans. It is merely an infected arm, which, when amputated, will bother our system no longer.