While the Government Delegates and the Federation Representatives are getting their moments in front of the podium, to address the issues of the Education Committee, a brief aside on the status of WADAworld as 'Observer'.
Without a Press-pass (note to Self: acquire a Press-pass), about 50 'Observers' are relegated to a lower-level auditorium, without direct access to the audience. There is a very feeble internet-wifi network, bleeding through the walls from the Press level.
However, the Press representatives themselves, are also relegated to a intermediate-level foyer, where they have massive tables to work from, combined with a very fast wifi network (I've noted that there are networks labelled Press-1, 2, 3, 4... but no 'Observers' network... did WADA really think those of us were here just to stare at the screen?
As I type this, the Spanish Delegation is intervening, stressing Prevention through Education, and discussing how 'weekend warriors' are finding these substances that they've heard about, in their gyms, cycling or futbal clubs: wherever weekend athletes congregate.
Next post on the Athletes... whoooaaah...
Watch WADA!Live!
..........@.........WADAwatch
FLASH: the late intervention from the Islamic Republic of Iran, having their Delegate discussing how Athletes were discussing their worries about some of the nutritional supplements they ingest...
Thursday, 15 November 2007
WADA FIVE: the morning interventions
Madrid ONE: the Apartheid, and Swag-Bag
Hola! From Madrid
Time posted 10h20 CET: An easy connection, through easyJet to Madrid, from the airport to the Conference Centre: the Palacio Municipal de Congressos is one Metro stop away from Terminals One, Two and Three.
A short detour for accreditation (I hope it was easier than becoming a ... WADA laboratory?), a lengthy session with very friendly, competent and sincere Spanish security police, and then...
The Apartheid treatment began.
When we registered, they showed 'Observers' as occupying what looked like the back row, and yet, when WADAwatch tried to enter, we were told to take the elevator down into the holes below, another subterranean location where members of the press, or other bloggers, or whoever, are arranged pell-mell.
The first session began, while the web-server and wifi network are either under-capacity or over-utilised: no signal is allowing this post to be 'real-timed' to you.
We do want to thank the government of Spain for a lovely USB memory-key, and the Swag Bag itself looks like a new computer-carry bag that comeZENhandy to travel back and forth without a whole suitcase full of weekend affairs.
The usual welcomes are pedantic, various officials from the Spanish Olympic Committee, and Madrid's mayor, are slowly warming up the audience for the opening act.
..........@..........WADAwatch
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
T minus TWO: countdown to Madrid and News Roundup
WADAwatch is on the move!
To Madrid, where hopefully a wifi-connection and a bit of sangria would liberate the conscious-stream of information offered to those who are interested in what WADA will work out, from its three-day session starting Thursday.
So this post will be brief.
NEWS Roundup
India needs a laboratory, what with its passion for cricket, and the coming Commonwealth Games in 2010:
India Needs Certified Lab For Dope Testing Immediately: WADA
India needs to put in place a proper drug-testing programme soon, especially with the Commonwealth Games coming up in 2010, says a top official of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
'I would think the government and sports bodies in India would be seriously considering a fully-certified laboratory for dope testing,' David Howman, the director general of WADA, told IANS here.
+ + + + + +
Mr Pound is going out the big door, with a typically brash, retrospective commentary on his record in WADA:
Dick Pound: Making enemies was part of job
Although there are some who will not miss his grand-standing, outspoken style, his willingness to lob verbal grenades in the direction of certain athletes at the slightest invitation by the media, he has no regrets about the enemies he has made along the way.
"It's a matter of confronting cheating when you see it," he says. "There is organised cheating going on and it's not going to go away if we all hold hands and say 'ummmm'. These are people who know the rules and in 99.9 per cent of cases they don't give a shit about them. They're destroying sport and taking rewards away from fellow athletes.”
That's a short-n-sweet roundup of the latest news: WADAwatch is relocating to Madrid on Thursday morning, hasta la vista todos hermanos y hermanas!
Soon, live from Madrid...
Watch WADA!!
..........@..........WADAwatch
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Was the French Lab ... ON STRIKE?
Anyone following the now-world-famous Iban Mayo EPO test fiasco is surely aware by now, that the French Lab formerly called the LNDD (now the AFLD département des analyses: "D.d.A.") was, perhaps irregularly, replaced as a testing facility, to administer the Mayo 'B Confirmation sample' testing.
This action came about by executive decision of the UCI, which contracts for testing services at the races being run under its rules, on a daily basis for those participating elite riders. This is standard, and done as such because the pro cyclists are holding UCI licenses through their national Cycling Federations.
But at WADAwatch, a new theory is brewing, that the D.d.A., which suffered brutal and embarrassing exposure to its "laissez-faire" hiring and training of technicians through the Floyd Landis 'testosterone' hearings in May of 2007, has simply, and irrevocably....................
gone bureaucratically..............
insane.
(OR! Maybe I have watched too many Kubrick films?)
How does one provide electroshock therapy to a group such as the D.d.A.?
Forgive my extremely-expressed doubts, but this is certainly becoming an intolerable situation, for the world that watches, and the cyclists who are fearing to participate.
For an accredited laboratory to call up that International Federation that is paying it to perform testing, at the singular most prestigious annual sporting event, the Tour de France, and inform them that...
"the doors are to be shut, and that the work-in-progress cannot be finished, because 'Zees ees ze time for ze vacations."
...is absurd.
Or... pathetic?
If only Stanley Kubrick were still alive, among us to write a script with ZENmud productions...
Taking Humbert Humbert from Lolita, Dr Strangelove from... yes, the movie itself, or Dr Ludivico from A Clockwork Orange, and our favorite HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey; there is truth in art, as surely if not more than that 'truth' found in the recent WADA-accredited laboratory 'fiascos'... a word that cannot oft enough be repeated.
But how did UCI, which has known about the apparent failures in the French LNDD-D.d.A. laboratory for some three years or more, take the actions that sent the Mayo 'B Confirmation sample' to Ghent, a separate lab, in a differenct country?
As previously cited, here and elsewhere, Anne Gripper, the relatively recently-appointed UCI anti-doping Czarina, has been cited in discussing, in a somewhat uncomprehendingly (to this author) manner, the consequent steps of a potential AAF.
The fall-out from this Summer's Tour de France certainly left the Union Cycliste Internationale with some strange questions to answer, from Tour de France organizers, competitors, teams and the Press.
Was the strain too much?
Or... a SWAG (Stupid, wild-ass guess) moment: did the D.d.A. simply go on strike?
Could Professeur Jacques de Ceaurriz have taken a vacation, along with his entire staff, at the same August period last summer when they were feverishly claiming Floyd Landis' culpability?
It doesn't flow, in WADAwatch-think, that we've never heard discussion of the then-LNDD being under constraints by a national French vacation ritual.
Where will the truth fall, who wins and who loses, when the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) rules are not followed by those whose jobs depend on their continual scientific accuracy, their unwavering ethical priorities, or is their 'Stick it!' attitude towards a world that doesn't comprehend, what is the dominant factor?
There are only three weeks until the WADA World Conference in Madrid, and frankly, WADA has a lot of un-drafted modifications necessary to perform the task it has taken on.
WADAwatch believes that the first order of business in Madrid, on November 15th, is to entertain a motion NOT to approve the newly-revised WADA CODE 2007.
For the betterment of sport, it is imperative that similar discussions to append and improve the work of laboratories take precedence over any tightening of controls on the Athletes who are reeling under the weight of mis-applied testing procedures and un-harmonious standards around the world...
Please contact your national laboratory, if you reside in one of the countries that has one or more of the now-33 accredited laboratories, and ask them to respond to the questions that they were presented weeks ago, in the crystelZENmud Questionnaire for WADA laboratories.
And never EVER stop thinking that we must, together,
Watch! WADA
..........@..........WADAwatch
