I am practicing dry January.
I am more interested in the truth than your insincere and inflammatory rhetoric.
I think we can look at anti-doping convictions in two ways: 1) constrained by a "book" less interested in finding the truth that offers significant shortcuts to anti-doping prosecution bodies, and increases the burden of all athletes, or 2) intellectually, applying higher standards and using long established best practices of philosophy and logic.
I am interested in exploring the truths that can be pursued and supported using the intellectual process. Presumptions and assumptions are not truths. An intellectual search for the truth is not constrained by external time pressure (i.e. resolving the dispute in time for the US trials), and is not limited by the incomplete evidence that athletes are able to obtain in that short time.
Intellectuals seeking real truths must understand the context in which certain decisions are made, e.g. according to the rules in a book that seeks fast and cheap convictions, at the expense of digging for and finding truths.
Intellectually, to rebut a claim that the nandrolone was in a burrito, it is required to examine the whole burrito, and not just parts of it. This miminum intellectual requirement cannot be waived by WADA. Rebutting only pork meat and stomach is only a partial rebuttal of the claim that the nandrolone was in a burrito. Pretending it is a complete rebuttal is delusional, if not dishonest.
The truth is that grease was substantiated ("substantiate: provide evidence to support or prove the truth of") by the evidence of witness testimony, and photos, and chorizo was substantiated by a written statement from the food truck owner.
My second paragraph is not contradictory. First, I did not concede that all the parties did things by the book. On the contrary, I agree with the CAS Panelist who, after examining the limited evidence before the panel, ruled that the WADA Lab deviated from the WADA TD on Nandrolone when reporting an AAF.
Second, the book doesn't require that WA/AIU offer complete rebuttals, so your fabricated suggestion that they are only obligated to consider substantiated claims (which in any case they failed to do) is incorrect. All of the burden is placed on the accused athlete to establish non-intent with "specific and concrete elements" to a subjective standard of more likely than not. No rebuttal is required to judge whether the athlete met this burden. Yet a complete rebuttal is required for those seeking the intellectual truth.
Tygart's repeated criticism since 2015 is that, doing things by the book treats innocent athletes who have done nothing wrong as intentional cheats, and railroads them to 4-year bans. With respect to establishing the source of banned substances, it is well known by WADA that such proofs are difficult if not impossible. Legal feedback on the 2015 changes include these statements from an expert opinion by Judge Jean-Paul Costa (English translation): "Such proof [how the substance entered the body] is difficult to provide. ... an impossible proof either leads to a reversal of the burden of proof or to the irrefutable assumption of an anti-doping rule violation [...]".
Two well known controversial issues in the book are the principles of "strict liability" and "presumed intent".
As we have seen just in several recent cases, "strict liability" means that athletes are held responsible for the actions and decisions of others, whether it is known or knowable to the athlete or not. On no-notice, they may need to become crash-course experts in the hidden practices and history of the beef and pork industry, as well as other exotic animals whether domestic or imported, including how these practices and history changed under exceptional circumstances like a once-in-a-century pandemic causing supply issues; of the manufacture of a broad range of consumer products from medicines to gummy bears; of the scientific research related to all these things, including their limitations, etc. Even in the best case, successful athlete outcomes still punished innocent athletes with a 1+ year suspension and the associated loss of primary income from racing and sponsorship, plus legal and scientific expenses in 5-figures. In real life, who can afford to launch a five-figure legal defense while being immediately suspended from their job? Athletes who mostly live on the poverty line? I think most club and professional athletes don't fully appreciate their obligations when signing a mandatory non-negotiable contract as a pre-condition to do what they want to do, what they love to do, and what they are good at -- compete in sport.
"Presumed intent" means the athlete is considered by default, without any evidence or proof, as an intentional cheat, unless and until the athlete can establish otherwise. As we have seen above, this is well known by WADA and legal experts to be a difficult, if not impossible task, for the athlete, especially when put on notice 1 month after the fact.
Intellectually, the fact that these policies have not been overturned or rewritten or even accepted as necessary, doesn't eliminate the context or the negative consequences of these policies. A finding of "doping" under a principle of strict liability will include by design all innocent athletes who, through no fault, negligence, intent, of their own, unknowingly ingested a banned substance as a result of actions and decisions of others. And a finding of "intent" includes all innocent athletes who were unable to obtain the evidence that could establish non-intent, and those who did not contest the charges because they don't have enough money to finance access to competent legal and scientific expert representation.
Intellectual fans should be aware of this artificial context, and that a finding of "intentional doping" by the book may not be an intellectual truth.
