Violette wrote:
rekrunner wrote:
cheating: act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage
To determine cheating, the question becomes, did she act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage?
WA/AIU/CAS/WADA did not ask, nor answer that question.
If you were in charge, would Shelby be suspended? Or would you determine that because you could not read her mind, she should be reinstated?
Interesting question -- what would I do if I were in charge? This is long, but the short answer is I would reform the rules, in a direction suggested by USADA Anti-Doping Chief Travis Tygart, and driven by a strong athlete representation.
My interest is bigger than Houlihan. My most important comments on this topic have been directed at the level of justice currently enabled under the WADA Code, rather than the specific individual case of Houlihan.
In the interest of justice for athletes, and the lack of data regarding the source of the banned substance, WADA rules already foresee calling her test result an ATF, and triggering the path of collecting more evidence in order to build a solid case, before bringing any charges and making them public. The current rules are ambiguous and inconsistently applied, depending significantly on the will of the ADA or ADO in question, and the make-up of the adjudication panel.
Were I in charge, the rules would be more clear, with more refinement and graduation, and would permit a case by case evaluation and determination of guilt and appropriate sanction proportional to the merits of the evidence, the detected amounts, and other proven facts. Such changes to the Code should come, not from me, an outsider in both sport and anti-doping, but from a stronger athlete lobby -- those with the only skin in the game, and those whom WADA are committed to protecting.
In the intellectual realm of math, and science, and the legal realm of law, assertions have to be proved to a minimum standard, and the value of such assertions is proportional to the extent they have been proved (not to mention the validity of the underlying assumptions). The latest iteration of the WADA Code has eliminated the most difficult burdens for ADAs and ADOs, allowing them to prosecute and adjudicate according to lower standards. This will result in more prosecutions, but of lower quality and merit.
If you have read any of my previous posts on this topic in many threads over the last 6 months, you will no doubt recall many references to the 27 cases prosecuted by USADA, followed by examples of the US Anti-doping chief (the guy who brought down Armstrong and Salazar) speaking against the injustice towards athletes as a direct result of recent changes to the WADA code that automatically railroad athletes to 4-year bans, by default, when evidence is lacking. All of these arguments can be applied to Houlihan.
And you will no doubt recall the case of Simon Getzmann, who, by fortune alone, still had an unused sample of a prescribed WADA-legal pain-killer for testing, and therefore was able to clear his name, ableit only after serving a more than 1-year suspension, and at a personal cost of more than 10,000 Euros, and having it still count as his "first offense". Under the WADA Code, clearing your name through proving no fault of negligence of your own, after a 1-year suspension, and associated loss of income, at a personal cost of 10,000 Euros for lawyers and lab testing, yet still counting as a first strike, is considered good luck, and among the best possible outcomes.
What happens to athletes no longer in possession of something they ingested 1 month earlier? What chance do they have of meeting this burden on the balance of probability? The current WADA Code makes no distinction between a one-time finding of ~5 ng/ml, and, for example, the case of CJ Hunter, with 2000 ng/ml. Both would get a 4-year ban for intentional doping.
To add insult to injury, the "convicted" athletes are then subject to the court of public opinion, by "fans", armchair "scientists" and "lawyers", "journalistic pundits", etc., generally lacking subject matter knowledge and expertise, who attempt to interpret the facts of the case under rules which do not require the evidence to meet a minimum intellectual or legal burden, looking to reinforce their beliefs and justify new labels like "cheater", and "fraudster", and "liar", going above and beyond what WADA permits, and what the WA/AIU/CAS alleged, presumed, or found.
WADA's objective is to protect the athletes -- it doesn't seem too much to ask to protect them from unjust prosecution enabled by WADA.