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.
To your last sentence: No, it could have been spiked, but none of us think so, and I don’t want to raise this as a possibility at all here. But I disagree in the judgement of the balance. And of course you are right there’s a difference between a civil case and a criminal case -despite this the CAS procedure different significantly from a civil case in the normal courts.
I find it more unlikely that Houlihan intentionally ingested nandrolone pills (given the spares information I have since CAS only alludes through one of the Wada brought experts, and doesn’t give arguments and reasoning, contrary to what they did in the two mentioned Norwegian cases.) than a black marked contaminated pig meat (despite the latter also is un probable -I chose this over the first un probability -pills- and secondly I would have Houlihan acquitted because of doubt over which over the two un probabilities to chose).
I think CAS has made a bias decision here between two un probabilities because of potentially false information about Houlihan’s blood pass…
There is no sabotage -"spiking" - unless there is evidence for it. There was none.
The fact of a positive test for a banned substance is not sufficient for conviction as it could have been treated as an ATF, or an AAF.
I only have to go to the CAS report to see she was indeed convicted on a presumption that the WADA Lab correctly followed their rules when reporting the positive test as an AAF.
The CAS Panel did uphold that presumption by majority, but I still find it concerning that the CAS Panel was not unanimous. This means that a minority (one of the three) of the CAS Panel members was persuaded that the postive test was incorrectly reported as an AAF as a result of a deviation from the mandatory guidance. That is concerning however you want to look at it. It has been suggested that that was Houlihan's pick of panelist, but this only raises even bigger concerns that CAS Panelists cannot be fully trusted to be neutral arbitrators, and opens questions of other sources of CAS Panel bias, like familiarity bias from previous arbitrations, which may have been a deciding factor in the majority ruling. The determination of innocence or guilt should never be a factor of the luck of the draw of CAS Panelists.
The lack of CAS Panel unanimity suggests that there is an ambiguity in the guidelines that can sometimes leave the reporting up to the discretion of the WADA Labs, and/or the testing authority, rather than being determinable by clear written guidance governing the labs and testing authorities. I find it of particular concern that it seems that they used a test result (CIR) to determine that the origin of the nandrolone was exogenous, contradicting the written guidance that this CIR result may not be used to determine exogenous origin, if an athlete "invokes" pork offal consumption.
All this subsequent discussion about nandrolone possibly coming from consuming pork in a burrito, presupposing a cascade of low probability factors, is not related to the conviction, but rather the resulting sanction of 4-years, based on another presumption of intent.
Late to the argument.
Disparate opinions on complex athlete cases are inherent to the system and underscore the rigorous assessment of such decisions. This thoroughness underscores the system's commitment to reaching justifiable conclusions, even within the framework of legitimate disagreements.
CAS adheres to meticulously designed selection protocols to ensure a diverse and neutral panel. Thorough documentation practices and multiple layers of review mitigate the risk of external influence on dissenting opinions.
You sound as though you have some experience in this area.
^^^^ You know it's too obvious with your weird dishonest way of trolling, trying to discuss Houlihan's case in a thread about Katir's missed tests, twisting everything that's in the CAS document without ever quoting a paragraph from there directly, blaiming CAS for doing their job correctly, and so on and so on.
And of course you write more often than not as rekrunner and curiousdude at the same time, playing pingpong with yourself.
You claimed that I made up the burrito pig meat contamination judgment. But I didn’t cite this from the CAS report because this burrito problematic is well known among posters. But here is a quote and I also link below to the CAS papers the quote is taken from:
“106. Based on the above, the panel finds it is possible but improbable that the meat of an uncastrated boar ended up in the burrito that the athlete ate.”
You are right about the fact that the current thread is about Katir. But there are so many parallels to the Houlihan case, that I thought it was interesting to compare…
Then it comes to CAS I’m not blaming the persons in the panel for “not doing their job correctly” -I just pointed out that they may have been influenced by information about Houlihan’s ABP (and that the value / correctness of blood pass is highly contested among some researchers).
I grew up playing ping pong, so that’s a sport I’m quite good at. And I admit that I have had an idea of playing some ping pong between my two usernames (est un autre and justanothercuriousdude) because it could be fun to critise one self when I now and then have deserved it. But I haven’t committed to such a ping pong yet…
Of course you won’t believe me. -I’m cool with that (still will try to upload the mentioned photo to try to prove I am a Norwegian, and not the merited rekrunner.. Please follow my efforts…
The fact of a positive test for a banned substance is not sufficient for conviction as it could have been treated as an ATF, or an AAF.
I only have to go to the CAS report to see she was indeed convicted on a presumption that the WADA Lab correctly followed their rules when reporting the positive test as an AAF.
The CAS Panel did uphold that presumption by majority, but I still find it concerning that the CAS Panel was not unanimous. This means that a minority (one of the three) of the CAS Panel members was persuaded that the postive test was incorrectly reported as an AAF as a result of a deviation from the mandatory guidance. That is concerning however you want to look at it. It has been suggested that that was Houlihan's pick of panelist, but this only raises even bigger concerns that CAS Panelists cannot be fully trusted to be neutral arbitrators, and opens questions of other sources of CAS Panel bias, like familiarity bias from previous arbitrations, which may have been a deciding factor in the majority ruling. The determination of innocence or guilt should never be a factor of the luck of the draw of CAS Panelists.
The lack of CAS Panel unanimity suggests that there is an ambiguity in the guidelines that can sometimes leave the reporting up to the discretion of the WADA Labs, and/or the testing authority, rather than being determinable by clear written guidance governing the labs and testing authorities. I find it of particular concern that it seems that they used a test result (CIR) to determine that the origin of the nandrolone was exogenous, contradicting the written guidance that this CIR result may not be used to determine exogenous origin, if an athlete "invokes" pork offal consumption.
All this subsequent discussion about nandrolone possibly coming from consuming pork in a burrito, presupposing a cascade of low probability factors, is not related to the conviction, but rather the resulting sanction of 4-years, based on another presumption of intent.
The low probability was her excuse relating to allegedly consuming a contaminated pork burrito. By contrast, what was indisputable was the presence of a banned drug in her system. Hence the violation for which she had no accepted defence.
We also see that in courts with more than one judge/panellist a decision does not have to be unanimous but only of a majority. The CAS decision isn't any less credible because it wasn't unanimous on all points before it. That is how courts work.
To your last sentence: No, it could have been spiked, but none of us think so, and I don’t want to raise this as a possibility at all here. But I disagree in the judgement of the balance. And of course you are right there’s a difference between a civil case and a criminal case -despite this the CAS procedure different significantly from a civil case in the normal courts.
I find it more unlikely that Houlihan intentionally ingested nandrolone pills (given the spares information I have since CAS only alludes through one of the Wada brought experts, and doesn’t give arguments and reasoning, contrary to what they did in the two mentioned Norwegian cases.) than a black marked contaminated pig meat (despite the latter also is un probable -I chose this over the first un probability -pills- and secondly I would have Houlihan acquitted because of doubt over which over the two un probabilities to chose).
I think CAS has made a bias decision here between two un probabilities because of potentially false information about Houlihan’s blood pass…
There is no sabotage -"spiking" - unless there is evidence for it. There was none.
Disparate opinions on complex athlete cases are inherent to the system and underscore the rigorous assessment of such decisions. This thoroughness underscores the system's commitment to reaching justifiable conclusions, even within the framework of legitimate disagreements.
CAS adheres to meticulously designed selection protocols to ensure a diverse and neutral panel. Thorough documentation practices and multiple layers of review mitigate the risk of external influence on dissenting opinions.
I don't think this case was so complex. The CAS only had to decide two questions: 1) did the WADA Lab deviate from their rules -- something well within the capability of CAS Panelists -- and if not, 2) did Houlihan establish not intentional on the balance of probability.
Much was made of the ridiculousness of her answer to the second question, but without the very samples to test from the timeframe in question, there was always a low probability of Houlihan succeeding in determining the source, against nationwide probabilities, and therefore in succeeding to establish no intent, regardless of guilt.
But for the first question, we are talking about here about a simple question regarding what the clarifications in the TD2021NA mean and when they mean it. The key phrase I think undoes the CAS majority's reasoning is the restriction: "The origin of the urinary 19-NA may not be established by GC/C/IRMS analysis ...", because it was used to establish exogenous origin. In their reasoning, the CAS explains many things around that phrase, but fails to explain why the GC/C/IRMS analysis may be used to establish exogenous origin, in this instance, seemingly contrary to WADA's guidance. The reason for this prohibition is obvious, as the test will measure what the pig ate (C3 vs. C4 plants), rather than the athlete. Note that we are in the "WADA Lab" pre-ADRV charge phase, before any discussion or decision of the merits of the pork-offal ingestion explanation.
xxxx Didn’t work, not even after resetting my password. Can somebody (f.ex in the Let’s run adm) help me out here. I have also lost (for a long time) my access to edit my postd ( some 20 min after posting) that I had before…
The low probability was her excuse relating to allegedly consuming a contaminated pork burrito. By contrast, what was indisputable was the presence of a banned drug in her system. Hence the violation for which she had no accepted defence.
We also see that in courts with more than one judge/panellist a decision does not have to be unanimous but only of a majority. The CAS decision isn't any less credible because it wasn't unanimous on all points before it. That is how courts work.
Sure, many points before a CAS Panel with scarce evidence require making determinations based on incomplete evidence against some subjective threshold like "balance of probabilty" and this may lead to a lack of unanimity on these ambiguous points.
What I find concerning here is that there is a lack of unanimity on the specific fundamental question of whether the WADA Lab followed or deviated from its rules. This doesn't involve guessing what may or may not have likely happened based on incomplete evidence and some gut feeling assessment of credibility of witnesses. All the necessary facts and rules are there. The rules governing the WADA Lab should describe only one predictable way to treat the test results, in order to have a predictable outcome. A different panel might have ruled differently, and maybe already has in other cases by other testing authorities. An athlete's guilt cannot be a function of the members of the tribunal and how they interpret rules. WADA rules and guidelines needs to have predictability, or else rulings will be seen as subjective and whimsical. Indeed, this kind of universal standardization is one of the "raisons d'etre" for the creation of the worldwide agency WADA.
You said they claimed there was zero chance of contamination. Without evidence. Now your quote says that uncastrated boar was improbable - try to find the two differences.
As for CAS "may have been influenced by information about Houlihan’s ABP" - last time you considered that to be most likely. Thank you for backpedaling.
You should also understand, before you keep spreading such rumors, that CAS has no way of knowing about Houlihan's ABP.
I suspect "surprise surprise", among many other anonymous handles over the last year, is "casual obsever", who no longer posts under his registered handle.
Hahahaha - as an infamous long-time troll wrote this morning:
"Accusing us of being each other is just a form of trolling -- a deflection to avoid a discussion that addresses or contains any merit."
See, you can be funny! I upvoted your post for that, although the rest was your typical off-topic nonsense, another deflection to avoid a discussion that addresses or contains any merit.
The low probability was her excuse relating to allegedly consuming a contaminated pork burrito. By contrast, what was indisputable was the presence of a banned drug in her system. Hence the violation for which she had no accepted defence.
We also see that in courts with more than one judge/panellist a decision does not have to be unanimous but only of a majority. The CAS decision isn't any less credible because it wasn't unanimous on all points before it. That is how courts work.
Sure, many points before a CAS Panel with scarce evidence require making determinations based on incomplete evidence against some subjective threshold like "balance of probabilty" and this may lead to a lack of unanimity on these ambiguous points.
What I find concerning here is that there is a lack of unanimity on the specific fundamental question of whether the WADA Lab followed or deviated from its rules. This doesn't involve guessing what may or may not have likely happened based on incomplete evidence and some gut feeling assessment of credibility of witnesses. All the necessary facts and rules are there. The rules governing the WADA Lab should describe only one predictable way to treat the test results, in order to have a predictable outcome. A different panel might have ruled differently, and maybe already has in other cases by other testing authorities. An athlete's guilt cannot be a function of the members of the tribunal and how they interpret rules. WADA rules and guidelines needs to have predictability, or else rulings will be seen as subjective and whimsical. Indeed, this kind of universal standardization is one of the "raisons d'etre" for the creation of the worldwide agency WADA.
That the process requires the making of judgements - which can result in differing conclusions - does not mean it is "subjective".
Your friend tried to convince the mods to reduce the no. of posts for rek. You post almost 4 times as often as him.
Why does he care about rek and not about you?
Even your friend himself posts more often than rek. Strange people both of you.
Rekrunner posts mainly on doping threads, with one or two exceptions. My interests are wider. However there is no rule restricting the numbers of posts. If there was there would be no discussion about that point. But what is apparent is that you are more interested in the number of my posts than the subject of the thread. It seems you have nothing to offer on the latter.
My initial post was not adressed to you but to your friend.
He wanted the mods to restrict the no. of posts for rek but not for you, Army. Despite the fact that you post almost 4 times as often as rek (maybe to times as often in doping related threads?).
It seems you are not interested in my initial post at all, so why have you replied to it?
xxxx Didn’t work, not even after resetting my password. Can somebody (f.ex in the Let’s run adm) help me out here. I have also lost (for a long time) my access to edit my postd ( some 20 min after posting) that I had before…
blob:null/e7c0dc1b-7ffe-4f63-99e9-2646abae1894
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
You said they claimed there was zero chance of contamination. Without evidence. Now your quote says that uncastrated boar was improbable - try to find the two differences.
As for CAS "may have been influenced by information about Houlihan’s ABP" - last time you considered that to be most likely. Thank you for backpedaling.
You should also understand, before you keep spreading such rumors, that CAS has no way of knowing about Houlihan's ABP.
Man, you are really splitting hairs here too -you should read the CAS papers yourself. -Their decision is clearly based on (they say so) the expert witness that f.ex in paragraph 40 says that the probability for contaminated pig food in the US human food chain is close to zero. And another place he says something like a chance of 1:10000…
And when you compare my words may have been with likely you are again splitting hairs, because the point is that I don’t know what has happened. If I knew I would have used the word surely… My point is that Wada very well may have told CAS about the blood pass informally, yes that this is even likely (but of course not sure -how would I know; it’s just a reasonable suggestion when people talk together).
I don’t spread rumours. I am just saying something we all could think after some afterthought -that people talk together. If they have talked about ABP I can of course not know any better than everybody else, as long as it isn’t mentioned. But there are of course a lot of things that aren’t mentioned..).
Rekrunner posts mainly on doping threads, with one or two exceptions. My interests are wider. However there is no rule restricting the numbers of posts. If there was there would be no discussion about that point. But what is apparent is that you are more interested in the number of my posts than the subject of the thread. It seems you have nothing to offer on the latter.
My initial post was not adressed to you but to your friend.
He wanted the mods to restrict the no. of posts for rek but not for you, Army. Despite the fact that you post almost 4 times as often as rek (maybe to times as often in doping related threads?).
It seems you are not interested in my initial post at all, so why have you replied to it?
You commented about me. But then I don't see that you comment about anything else. So what have you offered on the thread subject?
I suspect "surprise surprise", among many other anonymous handles over the last year, is "casual obsever", who no longer posts under his registered handle.
Hahahaha - as an infamous long-time troll wrote this morning:
"Accusing us of being each other is just a form of trolling -- a deflection to avoid a discussion that addresses or contains any merit."
See, you can be funny! I upvoted your post for that, although the rest was your typical off-topic nonsense, another deflection to avoid a discussion that addresses or contains any merit.
I also suspect you created the troll handle "bye bye rek", and several others over the years, and that Coevett is spoofing me in another thread. It's a convenient way not to have to stand by your words.
One difference is that I don't use these suspicions as a permanent diversion and substitute for discussion. I also followed up with several discussions containing merit, rather than avoiding discussion, including offering some factual corrections to both "justanothercuriousdude" and "Armstronglivs".
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