The whereabouts failure is not a determination by WADA that an athlete has probably doped (as rekrunner has been so anxious to point out) but the rule is based on the likelihood that an athlete who misses a succession of tests will be doing so because they are doping (which rekrunner is correspondingly anxious to not see). The point is a subtle one. In essence, the rule has been formulated to counter likely doping but a violation is not a pronouncement by WADA that an individual athlete has doped. However, the man in the street - as we are - can easily form a view on whether the offender was probably doping or not if they can't come up with a justifiable excuse for missing any of those tests.
Yes, you are right “-the man in the street can easily form a view on whether the offender was probably doping or not” and so can I (I might even agree with the man’s view). But that doesn’t mean we are right! (In some cases we will be right, in others not -that is the consequences of lacking proof.)
One more miss would put a stamp on me that couldn't be removed:
Convicted of doping.
LOL your example says exactly what you are arguing against here.
I fully respect that you aren’t buying her narrative… But I thought it was interesting to hear from an athlete that never was busted three times -her voluntary interview post retirement. -She could of course have some motivation for telling this history that is oblivious to us, but I got a stronger impression (of a none forced) honesty than you obviously did…
Seriously, that is your example for "reasonable cause"? She alleged 1) to have forgotten to update her whereabouts while traveling and 2) to have forgotten that her hour was from 7 - 8. I am not buying those excuses for one second.
What you don’t see here is this: The fact that her excuses here are “thin” (I agree in this label -but every whereabouts violations the athletes would be condemned for are by definition “thin” or else they would be acquitted as no personal responsibility for the actual whereabouts, this as a matter of fact is a possibility) can be flipped to being more truthful and honest, like this:
Unlike Katir, who would be ridiculed, if he made the same excuse as Kalla, the latter didn’t need this (thin) excuse to get off the hook, because she wasn’t on the hook -she had retired without any public knowledge about her two whereabouts violations.
Kalla could have produced a much better excuse than these two thin ones if she in the first place sat down and started to fabricate a narrative. Because she wouldn’t be contested, and she could have shaped it in way that is almost un possible to reveal without investigation (that of course never will come -she hasn’t broken any rules). Katir on the other hand can’t chance on this - his lie would be exposed. Ergo: Kalla is very credible because of the “thinness”. -In real life people does simple errors and misjudgments all the time -this narrative seems realistic to me…
Firstly, I don't have to agree with other posters in order to form my own views. Their definition of what a whereabouts failure means doesn't have to be mine. I form my views according to my own understanding of the issues. Hence, I don't agree with you.
Secondly, your claim that clean athletes can miss three tests in a given period is unlikely, as the great majority of athletes comply with the testing requirements. Carelessness, forgetfulness or even an inability to understand the testing process is never given as an explanation. This is obvious, as those who miss tests will also have complied with tests on other occasions; so they know what is expected of them.
It is therefore more probable that those who miss three tests are doping, as it suggests a pattern of evasion rather than mere forgetfulness, which is why WADA draws a line at three missed tests. It isn't a figure WADA has simply plucked out of the air but will be based on an understanding of how athletes who dope will try to circumvent the system.
The weakness in your thinking is to see no connection between antidoping measures and the actual problem these measures are a response to. It is ironic that the athletes and sports governance bodies can see the connection since they accept the rule that three missed tests is an antidoping violation and not an arbitrary and even unjust penalty imposed on mostly innocent athletes. If it were the latter the rule would be scrapped through the weight of their protests. There are none.
After that adamant personal declaration of independent thinking, you of all people must be able fully understand that I equally don't have to agree with any other posters either, even if 285 of them upvote the OP, and even if you are unable to understand why.
Like you, I form my views on the same facts and evidence and objective observations that we all share, but completely stripped of the subjective inferences and faith and fallacy that I am more than happy to point out in each and every thread, that you incorrectly mistake for an inability to comprehend.
There is no weakness in my thinking then, because I can see why the anti-doping measures were created, and I have no doubts that they catch some intentional test duckers. Furthermore, I do not argue it that it is "unjust" for clean athletes. But it is your use of words like "unlikely" "likelihood" and "more probable", which I find unpersuasive, because these terms have real quantitative meanings which require data to support, which you do not have.
You have overcomplicated it. CAS went with what the preponderance of the evidence suggested. That included an antidoping expert who submitted that the chance of her excuse being true was "near to zero". CAS ruled she intentionally doped on the balance of probabilities. The balance of probabilities is the basis on which most civil actions are decided - such as the civil court ruling that OJ Simpson caused his wife and her lover's death. That's good enough for most us (except of course OJ and Shelby Houlihan).
As we both know there’s a significant difference between the CAS system and normal courts. -In these last ones the prosecutor have to prove the guilt of the defendant, vs the totally opposite in the CAS processes -the defendant must prove his own innocence…
Furthermore: You are right that also the normal court rulings sometimes are based on (a lot of) indications and not proof. But I will pose that this is significantly rarer than in the CAS, where the bar isn’t so high (being convicted on indications)…
I have some problems with the expert that claimed no contamination pig meat in the American human food chain (the zero thing). We don’t know how he could be so sure of that, and we don’t know how easily one could test black marked soya fed boar meat in the burrito wagon (if so all the publicly would have erased every trace of illegal meat long time before any testing of it).
Yes, one has to balance probabilities, pros and cons. But I don’t think this was done impartially. Here is why: I think Wada told CAS that they for a long time had been targeting Houlihan (among other things first and foremost because of a suspicious ABP) and that they now finally had found something concrete -hurrah (don’t screw it up for us now -we know from the blood pass that she is guilty!). And that this decided the balance…
I think there was two both possible but unlikely scenarios here: 1. The contaminated food. 2. Shelby guilty of ingesting (supposedly no /little performance aiding) pills, in a situation with very frequent targeting testing, and supposedly with a knowledge of nandrolone easy to detect even in small doses.
Maybe it’s hard to swallow alternative 1 as a possibly and likely alternative. I don’t know.
But for me it’s even harder to go for number 2. And I miss a reasoning from CAS for why they went for this alternative. And I also think that in a normal court Shelby would maybe be acquitted because both alternatives were unlikely, and the doubt then shall be in favour of the defendant …
Lastly: I think that Wada / AUI also in the Kiprop and the Katir cases have done a lot of targeting tests / investigations based mostly on suspicious ABP’s. And I also fear they haven’t played fairly neither here (My guesses: the testers didn’t call Katir 17 times on the cell phone when he wasn’t at the right place, to give him a chance to come to them, as in the Kalla case). And the Kiprop test wasn’t dismissed (as it of course should have) despite proof of a corrupt Sms from one of the testers -could in theory be a sign of a planned corruption of the sample in the labs if Kiprop didn’t pay; hard to know. Severely broken protocol should of course always automatically dismiss a test…
So here is why Houlihan, Katir and Kiprop (and Henrik Ingebrigtsen and 30 + other athletes for that matter) all in their individual ways may suffer because of an alleged blood pass suspicion: All this suspicion may be without merit, simply because of bogus research and a false interpretation of the ABP! My words? Nope -In practice the words of the expert professor Jostein Hallen (he has done a thoroughly research, and says one cannot use blood values at all). And I myself have seen confirmation from Wada researchers themself of lack of adjusting for altitude training +++).
Please mods limit the rekbot to x amount of posts per day. It would improve his life too.
I would still be depressed by the sheer number of people who seem to hate the sport I love, and want to attack all the heroes of the sport with baseless speculations of cheating.
In all honesty, I might never have posted one single time about Katir -- an athlete I have no special feelings for or against -- committing a violation which seems more a question of administration and personal organization -- if I hadn't been repeatedly trolled by posters declaring some kind of victory, thinking I went home "devasted", and that 285 upvoters "told me so", as if anything about Katir's provisional suspension for missing three tests has contradicted anything I've ever said or thought. I completely expect both clean and dirty athletes to fail whereabouts, because the whole process seems cumbersome and error-prone, while placing all the liability and the responsibility on the athlete. I also expect athletes to test positive, roughly proportional to how they are tested.
But if I am repeatedly trolled, I whole-heartedly welcome this open invitation to participate in the discussion, and I am more than happy to point out the lack of facts, evidence, observations and logic, which form significant gaps which are often filled in by faith and fallacy, and in the worst case, lies and pure fabrication.
Again: if he had a really good explanation with proper evidence, he would not have been provisionally suspended. Those provisional suspensions come after months of back and forth between the athlete's team and the AIU.
Katir’s countryman, Mechaal, had a really good explanation -in fact so good that he eventually was acquitted. But first he was banned. So where do you see the big difference between him and Katir, or a period of back and forth..?
But sure, we all would benefit if those two could only post 5 or 10x per day. Imagine that, only 1 - 2 from each per trolled thread. Wouldn't that be great?
Yes their lives would improve too, after some hard weeks with tough withdrawal symptoms.
The whereabouts failure is not a determination by WADA that an athlete has probably doped (as rekrunner has been so anxious to point out) but the rule is based on the likelihood that an athlete who misses a succession of tests will be doing so because they are doping (which rekrunner is correspondingly anxious to not see). The point is a subtle one. In essence, the rule has been formulated to counter likely doping but a violation is not a pronouncement by WADA that an individual athlete has doped. However, the man in the street - as we are - can easily form a view on whether the offender was probably doping or not if they can't come up with a justifiable excuse for missing any of those tests.
Yes, you are right “-the man in the street can easily form a view on whether the offender was probably doping or not” and so can I (I might even agree with the man’s view). But that doesn’t mean we are right! (In some cases we will be right, in others not -that is the consequences of lacking proof.)
It doesn't mean what you say. It means we can form a view that is highly likely to be correct, based on the violation, whereas WADA is only concerned with the violation itself. WADA says to the athlete "you've missed three tests, you've broken the rules, so you will be penalized", while we can say the athlete was therefore probably doping - because the athlete had no legitimate excuse and doping is what the rule is intended to catch or deter. In this context we are dealing with what is probable, not what is certain.
You have overcomplicated it. CAS went with what the preponderance of the evidence suggested. That included an antidoping expert who submitted that the chance of her excuse being true was "near to zero". CAS ruled she intentionally doped on the balance of probabilities. The balance of probabilities is the basis on which most civil actions are decided - such as the civil court ruling that OJ Simpson caused his wife and her lover's death. That's good enough for most us (except of course OJ and Shelby Houlihan).
As we both know there’s a significant difference between the CAS system and normal courts. -In these last ones the prosecutor have to prove the guilt of the defendant, vs the totally opposite in the CAS processes -the defendant must prove his own innocence…
Furthermore: You are right that also the normal court rulings sometimes are based on (a lot of) indications and not proof. But I will pose that this is significantly rarer than in the CAS, where the bar isn’t so high (being convicted on indications)…
I have some problems with the expert that claimed no contamination pig meat in the American human food chain (the zero thing). We don’t know how he could be so sure of that, and we don’t know how easily one could test black marked soya fed boar meat in the burrito wagon (if so all the publicly would have erased every trace of illegal meat long time before any testing of it).
Yes, one has to balance probabilities, pros and cons. But I don’t think this was done impartially. Here is why: I think Wada told CAS that they for a long time had been targeting Houlihan (among other things first and foremost because of a suspicious ABP) and that they now finally had found something concrete -hurrah (don’t screw it up for us now -we know from the blood pass that she is guilty!). And that this decided the balance…
I think there was two both possible but unlikely scenarios here: 1. The contaminated food. 2. Shelby guilty of ingesting (supposedly no /little performance aiding) pills, in a situation with very frequent targeting testing, and supposedly with a knowledge of nandrolone easy to detect even in small doses.
Maybe it’s hard to swallow alternative 1 as a possibly and likely alternative. I don’t know.
But for me it’s even harder to go for number 2. And I miss a reasoning from CAS for why they went for this alternative. And I also think that in a normal court Shelby would maybe be acquitted because both alternatives were unlikely, and the doubt then shall be in favour of the defendant …
Lastly: I think that Wada / AUI also in the Kiprop and the Katir cases have done a lot of targeting tests / investigations based mostly on suspicious ABP’s. And I also fear they haven’t played fairly neither here (My guesses: the testers didn’t call Katir 17 times on the cell phone when he wasn’t at the right place, to give him a chance to come to them, as in the Kalla case). And the Kiprop test wasn’t dismissed (as it of course should have) despite proof of a corrupt Sms from one of the testers -could in theory be a sign of a planned corruption of the sample in the labs if Kiprop didn’t pay; hard to know. Severely broken protocol should of course always automatically dismiss a test…
So here is why Houlihan, Katir and Kiprop (and Henrik Ingebrigtsen and 30 + other athletes for that matter) all in their individual ways may suffer because of an alleged blood pass suspicion: All this suspicion may be without merit, simply because of bogus research and a false interpretation of the ABP! My words? Nope -In practice the words of the expert professor Jostein Hallen (he has done a thoroughly research, and says one cannot use blood values at all). And I myself have seen confirmation from Wada researchers themself of lack of adjusting for altitude training +++).
You really are getting overcomplicated with this. The standard of proof against an athlete is the balance of probabilities, which is how it works in a civil court. It isn't a criminal matter.
Houlihan tested positive for a banned substance for which she couldn't show legitimate cause. Her attempted defence of accidental contamination was seen as against the balance of probabilities. She couldn't produce convincing evidence to rebut the presumption that she intentionally doped. That's it. That you and others think she might be innocent is only speculation and against the weight of the evidence. If the banned substance in her body wasnt the result of accidental contamination only she could have put it there.
Again: if he had a really good explanation with proper evidence, he would not have been provisionally suspended. Those provisional suspensions come after months of back and forth between the athlete's team and the AIU.
Katir’s countryman, Mechaal, had a really good explanation -in fact so good that he eventually was acquitted. But first he was banned. So where do you see the big difference between him and Katir, or a period of back and forth..?
And his is why I think the celebrations for a Katir suspension at premature. Many athletes with three missed tests have appealed and had one or two removed, and the ban lifted. Gaby Thomas, Christian Coleman, Mechaal, Lizzie Armitstead (cyclist). Katir is arguing he was where he said he would be for the tests so if he can prove that, he'll still be in Paris. As with Houlihan and Peter Bol, Katir deserves due process
You really are getting overcomplicated with this. The standard of proof against an athlete is the balance of probabilities, which is how it works in a civil court. It isn't a criminal matter.
Houlihan tested positive for a banned substance for which she couldn't show legitimate cause. Her attempted defence of accidental contamination was seen as against the balance of probabilities. She couldn't produce convincing evidence to rebut the presumption that she intentionally doped. That's it. That you and others think she might be innocent is only speculation and against the weight of the evidence. If the banned substance in her body wasnt the result of accidental contamination only she could have put it there.
This doesn't seem all that accurate. There was no "weight of the evidence" as such, but rather the "weight of presumption". According to the CAS, it was up to the athlete to convince a panel to overcome two presumptions: 1) that the WADA Lab made the right call (AAF vs. ATF); and 2) that the presence was not intentional.
It doesn't sound like standard civil law to sanction the accused to the fullest extent based on presumptions, and then burden the accused with establishing that some elements do not apply.
It's also not so clear you should rely on civil law comparisons. From a 2006 paper looking at "The Strict Liability Principle and the Human Rights of the Athlete in Doping Cases", it is argued that doping "laws" should be viewed as "quasi-penal" and "pseudo-criminal" laws, as professional athletes cannot "voluntarily" choose to be subject to them, if they want to compete:
"Based on the criterion of voluntariness, disciplinary doping law must be recognised as having more in common with criminal law than with private law. This makes it pseudo-criminal law, which means that although disciplinary doping proceedings cannot be called criminal proceedings as such, criminal law principles should still have a perceptible effect on them."
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