AFLD Steps up a notch...

When it rains it pours, pour l'AFLD...

In relation to the discussion of the report AFLD purportedly sent to WADA and the UCI Monday, we harken back to the reputation 'earned' by various French governmental agents, or agencies, that seem to prefer assessing 'guilt' by the premature publication of 'suspicions' in the French press.


It certainly wouldn't be 'courteous', now would it, to afford both the UCI, and WADA, time to receive the report prior to wailing like a cat, (as WC Fields once said, that 'was swung in the air by its tail' (paraphrased, in relation to his non-support for his long-time lover's desire to return to her cabaret guitarist/singer career...)?


Cher Monsieur Bordry must, as always, be totally self-assured of the methodology and objectivity that is displayed through such crass and unconscious 'professional-ism' (or -suicide)?


Nevertheless, this column allows readers to find another French article regarding the Tour de France 2009, also from Le Monde, also from Monday, 5 October, 2009.


Des médicaments saisis au sein de certaines équipes


Summarizing due to the late hour (early? 02h43 Tuesday...), the French Police are now engaged in rifling hotel trash cans, as they and the Italians made famous back in the post-FESTINA era... Le Monde claims that the fishing was fruitful (we can only presume that these police were honest, transparent, and duty-bound), because:

"... several substances that benefit from no authorization for importation from the French Agency for Sanitary Security for health products (Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des produits de santé) were the object of judicial seizures at the bosom of certain foreign teams."

Telmisartan


Quinapril

These are anti-hypertension substances, which the article ascribes to use for sportsmen (and women) who are (obviously?) suffering from hypertension associated with blood transfusions (or 'blood packing').

Venlafaxine


Valpromide


Sitagliptine


Hematide

Most interestingly, Le Monde is proud to trumpet the names of these medications to the public (as is common in journalism, we are only 'the messenger', who reminds You that someone else has done this...).


WADAwatch is NOT on the side of 'doping Athletes' (or anyone violating WADA Rules: that includes Laboratories that are strictly liable to WADA's Code Article 6.4, et al, and the ISL, Tech Docs and the 'beauty of Science').


Now, this 'Hematide' is most interesting, because it's a product not yet on the market, under proprietary ownership from Affymax, from Palo Alto (Stanford's region), California. Le Monde reminds us that this medication probably won't see the market until 2011. It's Phase II clinical trials are being prepared right now.


Le Monde also puts out the requisite 'French spin' as the article winds up: "To have a 'clean heart' (French idiom) the AFLD wished to be able to test again certain Samples taken during the last Tour. Lacking the authorization from the UCI (proprietary organ of the Samples from the Tour de France 2009)..."

SIDEBAR: Faithful readers are reminded that such never stopped LNDD in 2004 and 2005, from analyzing (for 'research' purposes) the 'B Samples' that it allegedly kept frozen (sort of...) for five years, prior to (kind of) determining that there were 'obviously' traces of EPO in five or six rider's urine (although in 2000 they published some 29 positives (anonymously) were found in some 102 samples (using the same test, although 'accelerated testing methods were being 'tried' without a peer review system of publication, and from which five riders were 'granted anonymity', to the great detriment of Tour retiree Lance Armstrong

"... to pratice these complementary analyses, the AFLD and its Châtenay-Malabry laboratory are leaning, since several days, towards Samples from the Tour... 2008."


Le Monde reminds those whose heads were buried in the sand, that the 2008 was run 'renegade' (WADAwatch terms, not Le Monde's), during the Great WAR between UCI and ASO, the FFC (Fédération française du cyclisme) and ASO, and thus being the only post-WW II Tour to not be run under the Internation Federation (and respected (cough) Signatory of WADA, a veritable pioneer and martyr for anti-doping regulations)...


But we digress (and 'counter-spin'? At least we're open about it); Le Monde's author, Stéphane Mandard, closes up by reminding his audience how successful the AFLD was, in nabbing Ricardo Ricco and Bernard Kohl for CERA (M. Mandard is reluctant to remind readers that the CERA was 'found' because of collaboration between the laboratory Roche and WADA (but not the 'inserted secret marker' that was first rumoured widely)).


According to Mandard/AFLD, there are seventeen Tour riders 'in the collimator'...
(as you can see, a laser-focusing device with several uses, NOT recommended for children <<<< )


How to fathom, as we started this column, in the methods of a certain French Agency's Director, who seemingly (we've written that before) has no shame at all, in offering his 'conviction' (in the legal sense) prior than allowing 'justice' and the WADA Code to work its due course.


But again, we're talking of la France: the country, 'Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité', in which it now is taken as normal when its President, Nicolas Sarkozy, went on national (or international?) TV, from the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh last week, to pronounce a party 'guilty' in mid-trial (!!). The former French Prime Minister under whom Sarkozy worked as Interior Minister, is one of five parties 'arraigned' as 'suspects' in the internationally famous 'Affaire Clearstream' whose trial concerns the alleged placement of names on lists of bank clients, two of which were associated with Sarkozy's two parents.

"Guilty, until proven Innocent"

Vive la France...

..........@.........WADAwatch

one hundred percent pure

copyright 2009 Ww

In the World of Anti-Doping: a translated Interview from Switzerland

From the Swiss TSR TV network and the Swiss TeleTEXT service comes an interview with Martial SAUGY, director of the Swiss Anti – doping Laboratory in Lausanne. This interview is available to over a million (or two if counting the Pays de Gex (Ain) and Haute Savoie French départements) television viewers. For those following these subjects, Monsieur Saugy was the individual last autumn who told the press that, under his agency's analysis, some 47 samples from the 2007 Tour de France showed signs of EPO use.

That was a shocking story to read, after the massive revelations already stemming from last year's TdF, 'les affaires' that implicated Rasmussen, Vinokourov, Mayo and others. Moreover, it was a story that seems to have disappeared from view, ever since that first initial declaration.

WADAwatch translates this interview as a linguistic public service, to provide information to English readers that would not otherwise have access.

In our humble opinion, this
translated interview falls legally within
the 'education' exception to copyright law.

A link has been provided to the source web site.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

CYCLING: a Tour based on spring–water?

The Tour de France celebrates a sad anniversary this year. It was just ten years ago that the 'Affaire Festina' exploded, a verifiable revelation on the organized and generalized doping in bicycle racing.

Since then, the will to eradicate the flood has been repeated often by all the directing agents of cycling. Alas, the 'Tour of Renewal' announced in loud voices at each and every July debut has not brought but disillusions and scandals to this point.

Will this be otherwise this year, on the routes of the Tour? Martial Saugy, director of the Laboratoire suisse d'Analyse du Dopage, responds to the interrogations of an ever more sceptical public.

TXT: For some ten years and since the Festina affair, one speaks each year of the 'Tour of Renewal'. And at each occasion, the disillusion is total. Do you think that this will be different this year?

MS: I am living evidence of moderate optimism. I don't think we can talk of a Tour of Renewal or of a revolution in cycling. One cannot go abruptly into an idyllic situation with zero positive cases. Nevertheless I do think that a true taking of conscience has occurred in the world of cycling. The repetition of these affairs has created many problems for cycling and mentalities are evolving.

TXT: Has the introduction of the blood passport after the Astana scandal last year, in your opinion, forced a change in the comportment of cyclists?

MS: Yes, I think that the riders are more attentive and fearful of being nailed. Sadly, the passport cannot be used this year because the Tour de France is not part of the UCI calendar. And, the UCI refuses to put the passports to use for the Tour organizers (ASO).

TXT: Doesn't the conflict between the organizers of the Grand Tours and the UCI put an efficient fight against doping in peril?

MS: Unfortunately yes. These conflicts are really troubling. Alas, the financial stakes and prestige don't contribute enough to bring forth a greater credibility in the heart of the greater public. We really need to see that these different agents recommence to hold a dialogue so that we arrive at a global optimization of the fight (against doping).

TXT: The juridical aspects of the blood passport equally pose certain questions. Without proof of administration of substances, don't we risk observing more and more such interminable procedures such as that of Floyd Landis?

MS: Effectively, that is one of the key points that will have to be resolved as rapidly as possible. We must find a different route to prove manipulation.

TXT: So, what would this other route consist of?

MS: Certain jurists estimate that instead of penal sanctions, it may be better to apply medical sanctions. As such, on could instead retire racers from a competition if their blood characteristics are suspect. We have to find a just solution, so as to avoid to enter into judicial procedures of incredible length and which put down the credibility of the antidoping fight, as it was in the Landis affair.

TXT: Other than blood doping, there exists a mass of more classical doping forms (anabolisants, testosterone). The antidoping fight is it really more efficient for such products?

MS: I think that there are always people that will try to trick the system with these genres of products. The testosterone is for example difficult to discern if one is restrained only to post–race urine tests. Because of this fact one has to be more creative in the harvesting of samples, in going to test at the right moment, often at their home. This is what has become known as 'intelligence testing' (Ww note: en Français – “l'intelligence testing”).

TXT: That could implicate intrusions of more and more gravity in the private sphere. Will cyclists accept that?

MS: Unavoidably this will get down to a supplemental loss of liberty. But the racers will have to accept this, so as to arrive more rapidly to the goal of a clean sport of cycling. So that the public, the media and the sponsors continue to follow, cyclists are more than ever ready to make extra efforts. There is certainly an 'old guard' that shows itself as a bit more reticent, but the young are conscious of the sacrifice that will bring a better gloss to their races (Ww: FR – “redorer le blason”).

TXT: Other than the forms of traditional doping previously evoked, a new menace is appearing, that of 'genetic doping'. Does that cause any fear to you?

MS: At the moment, I am of the sentiment that the implantation of modified genes in a human body is not really on the menu. On the other hand, what causes me worry is metabolism modification by utilization of 'inductive substances' (Ww: FR – “substances inductrices”), that's to say substances which are going to stimulate the production of red blood cells or of endogenous EPO. For this reason, the introduction of the veritable biological passport and not only blood is necessary. There is an urgency to find these 'parades' (Ww: ???).

TXT: Finally, in view of the difficulties of the anti-doping fight, isn't it necessary to simply legalize the taking of prohibited products in the elite sports, which have become 'sport–business'?

MS: Personally, I think that there is no future for any legalized doping in sport. This would be a very sad message for our society. It would be as if someone demanded that I took amphetamines before going to work! One has to accept the body's limits and learn again the pleasure of performance. Competition of itself has to rise above the search for new records.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed by WADAwatch are
strictly formed with the purpose of inciting WADA to adhere
to its Fundamental Rationale, achieve its goals and fulfil
the aspirations of its Signatories, in achieving the
highest possible level of objective, neutral
science in sport-doping control.

A public service provided by

.................@...............WADAwatch

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

Is French Lab in Breach of Contract???

WADAwatch was interested in the aspects surrounding the news of the Iban Mayo EPO case, that came to light on 23 October 2007, via news reports (Reuters, the Canadian Press, VeloNews or, en français, l'Equipe) of 'unreadable' B Sample conclusions in the Belgian laboratory in Ghent.

Several amazing aspects of this case have come to mind, and this short post again will only touch on those.

The first aspect is this: as a 'Major Event Organization', the Amaury Sport Organization, operating the Tour de France as a UCI-licensed ProTour event (whether they appreciate that august distinction is a different story), is obliged to provide doping-testing services and facilities, which, for as long as this author knows, have been contracted out to the former Laboratoire Nationale du dépistage du dopage (LNDD), which is now renamed the 'département des analyses' under the Agence française de lutte antidopage.

WADAwatch is amazed, that in the contract that encumbers the above-mentioned parties, that the 'LNDD-cum-DDA' is provided to take a vacation during the middle of their most important, perhaps highest-paying, and certainly the most media-attracting series of tests that they perform annually.

While discussing this, does anyone recall that former 2006 Tour de France victor Floyd Landis, based his arguments on the incapacities (or incompetences) found in the violations of multiple regulations that govern the WADA-accredited labs? He requested his B Confirmation samples be tested at a separate facility, a request that he was denied.

So it is impressive to see that now, apparently, in 2007, the laboratory that is best known as a recidivist agent for leaking A Sample test results to the French sporting journal l'Equipe, decided it was more important to shut down for vacation, than to perform the terms of the contract that they held, perhaps with UCI, perhaps with TdF, perhaps with the Federation française de cyclisme, whoever...

So that Iban Mayo's samples were expedited off to the laboratory in Ghent, Belgium, where they were found 'illegible'.

So the next query, is how did a 'clear positive' A Sample show up in a separate laboratory, and become illegible? Was it mishandled? Improperly stored? Defrosted and then re-frozen? Is the Chain of Custody no help in providing additional information?

And while the Spanish cycling federation had previously proclaimed this B sample to be 'negative', the UCI (and Pat McQuaid, President, as well as Anne Gripper) wants the sample brought back to the LNDD-Département des analyses for a second, 'readable' testing session.

Is this fair to Iban Mayo?

Fair that LNDD, in the priorities it apparently holds dear, which, provisionally, are:

• a) to leak 'A Sample' results to l'Equipe,
• b) go on vacation,
• c) perform its contractual duties

Remember clearly written in the rules, is an aspect of confidentiality, which apparently in France only relates clearly, in law, to the marital life of its President, and his recent divorce.

Is this fair, that two labs within several hours of each other, and both accredited by WADA, cannot perform a test in the 'reasonable time' that the law requires?

Anne Gripper was quoted as having said (by the CanadianPress website):

"To ensure that the rider could have the B done more quickly, we transferred the sample, but the Ghent laboratory just couldn't get the sample to confirm the Paris" result, Gripper said.

Read that carefully, literally. Were those her true words?

It is not in the WADA CODE, or International Standard for Laboratories, nor the International Standard for testing, that a B Sample 'must confirm the Paris result'.

Translation error? Typing error?

An A Sample test, done objectively, professionally and by the WADA regulations, must reveal results that are reproducible. Data must be protected. Files must be correct, and the Chain of Custody impeccable. The B Sample may reveal that the A sample test is not accurate.

'Insuring that the rider could have the B result more quickly' is not what the rules state.

Now between WADA, UCI and the French or Belgian laboratories, it is hard to believe that Mayo hasn't a pure case of laboratory intransigence, or malfeasance, on which to proceed in justice. UCI itself, in publishing the Vrijman report, has been on notice about the apparent scientific capacities of the French laboratory, and if perhaps it has, itself, been used by this laboratory, would be a sad event,

In WADAwatch's opinion.


Watch! WADA
..........@..........WADAwatch