Italian court says it's "highly likely" an Olympic race walker's drug sample was tampered with to get him banned

As if the Italian justice system is known to be foolproof.

I've got zero sympathy for someone who admits to being an EPO cheat. EPO should be a lifetime ban for me. However, this case does interest me as while he admits to being an EPO cheat, he swears he didn't take roids here.

Why in the world would anyone bother to frame a race walker?

But WADA is also irate and is contemplating legal action against the judge for ' "multiple reckless and groundless allegations"

https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/30924491/italian-judge-dismisses-alex-schwazer-doping-case-slams-wada

rojo wrote:

As if the Italian justice system is known to be foolproof.

I've got zero sympathy for someone who admits to being an EPO cheat. EPO should be a lifetime ban for me. However, this case does interest me as while he admits to being an EPO cheat, he swears he didn't take roids here.

Why in the world would anyone bother to frame a race walker?

But WADA is also irate and is contemplating legal action against the judge for ' "multiple reckless and groundless allegations"

https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/30924491/italian-judge-dismisses-alex-schwazer-doping-case-slams-wada

I am not particularly interested in this race walker but rather the parallel system of justice that is WADA.

Its’ science is a closed book with its own standards.

Its’ justice system is an closed shop.

WADA was born of moral panic and this panic has overridden normality of human rights.

WADA demands more of its subjects in controls that have never ever been seen in the West. Certainly more publicaly admitted and praised controls than that the world has ever seen.

rojo wrote:

As if the Italian justice system is known to be foolproof.

So what? Regardless of his past, a court has cleared him. So more power to AS. He's been fighting this for years (and some of us have been giving updates here of where this was heading... regularly ignored).

So the question is why such egregious abuse of power has taken place. If only journalism was still alive Rojo....

KAV wrote:

rojo wrote:

As if the Italian justice system is known to be foolproof.

So what? Regardless of his past, a court has cleared him. So more power to AS. He's been fighting this for years (and some of us have been giving updates here of where this was heading... regularly ignored).

So the question is why such egregious abuse of power has taken place. If only journalism was still alive Rojo....

Why? This is what happens with a moral panic.

Rojo is so happy with life bans for EPO but fails to find independent peer review for the Biological Passports.

Ditto the granddaughter metabolites peer review papers.

It's amazing how everyone is writing "this race walker" like he was a no one. He was a devastating talent, when he came back after the first ban he won with an amazing margin against some of the bests of the world in a prestigious meeting. He deserves respect: he cheated, he served his sentence, and then he raced (with "high rational credibility") without being on EPO.

You even have to remember that we are talking about someone who races 50K's, another reason to respect him as his contenders

"As if Italian justice system is known to be foolproof"

Amazing.

Coming from a country where alleged murders are legally killed I wouldn't be so sarcastic with other's country justice system, even without allegating some datas to sustain your superficial sentence

Reminds me of the Paul Edwards case where they used someon else’s urine to find him guilty .

He obviously had really pissed someone off with the EPO.

"Highly likely" is not a yes, its frustrating when the justice system doesn't speak in absolutes especially in these kind of cases.

It either was or wasn't or it clouds any judgement.

Regardless the ban should of been a lifetime on the admittance of using EPO, zero tolerance.

I was just going to say Russia at work tampering with other countries’ samples. But I meant it as a joke.

rojo wrote:

As if the Italian justice system is known to be foolproof.

I've got zero sympathy for someone who admits to being an EPO cheat. EPO should be a lifetime ban for me. However, this case does interest me as while he admits to being an EPO cheat, he swears he didn't take roids here.

Why in the world would anyone bother to frame a race walker?

But WADA is also irate and is contemplating legal action against the judge for ' "multiple reckless and groundless allegations"

https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/30924491/italian-judge-dismisses-alex-schwazer-doping-case-slams-wada

Rojo, to better understand this you need to know the main target here was not the athlete but mainly his coach!

Schwazer was desperate to come back from the 2012 suspension and he (or whoever in his crew) had the brilliant idea to team up with Sandro Donati. This was an attempt to come clean with his past and give him back some credibility.

So who is Donati?

He is a former top level coach and an icon in the fight against doping. At least on a national level. Or should we say he was until his athlete was busted? That doubt is what we were left with in 2016...

Donati had exposed many cheats over several decades, written books (note: I didn't read any of them - I just happened to attend one of his readings once). In his works he went so far to "tarnish" the reputation of many national sports idols. Many threatened to sue him but nobody went beyond these publicly announced threads because they knew he had not made up stuff himself. If they went in the courtroom many more details would have surfaced and eventually would have brought down fomer stars forr good.

Now keep in mind elite sports is a rather small ecosystem. Those very same people (former dopers, long time officials...) are still around and in part keep positions of power.

Knowing Donati could further expose the skeletons in their wardrobes must have been a painful thought to live with over all the years.

Now Donati, who in the public mind had an almost untouchable integrity, mad a mistake.

He accepted the request by Schwazer and went back to actively coach an athlete.

Rojo is right, an EPO cheat doesn't usually deserve the benefit of the doubt. With the help of Donati they wanted to overcome this and set an example for clean sport and a clean comeback.

The enemies in turn saw an almost unique chance to discredit the anti doping fighter for good.

Schwazer was a nice opportunity for them. An EPO-cheat caught doping again (nobody should be surprised, right...). Under the tutelage of Donati! The coach was backing the athlete in his comeback. So he was litterally standing behind him. If you use a big enough weapon one shot will be enough to kill them both so to say.

As long as nobody further investigates and finds some strange values in the lab this works.

Not sure why, they put a lot of effort in this investigation and did extensive studies with other athletes. They specifically recruited them to have comparable data. Apparently the findings led to this outcome.

So was Schwazer just a collateral victim you may ask? Not really. After his 2012 positive he admitted the doping violation and at the same time he tried to bring down many within the federation for "knowing but looking the other way". So he burned a lot of bridges right there, something which would also come back to him later in his quest to come back Police had tapped some phones of people connected to the federation and there was the anecdote where one said something along the lines of "we will make this b****** pay for it" where in the context it was clear to whom they referenced also without naming names. "Knowing but looking the other way" did not hold up in the court and everybody was cleared as far as I know. So there you have some more pissed off people biding their time for revenge.

Not sure what else I forgot in order to give you some more context to this story. But for sure this twisted plot had not just the primary goal of bringing down some racewalk dude.

All of this could have been avoided if the epo-cheat got banned for life rigt away!

rhinetalrunner wrote:

I was just going to say Russia at work tampering with other countries’ samples. But I meant it as a joke.

In the public often the point was made he might have been sabotaged by the Russians since he contributed to bring them down.

I don't think so. He was called to testify what he knew about doping in Russia, but then again that was just one single testimony in that huge scandal. People fail to see this in the bigger context.

Before they would go put effort to engineer a positive for a race walker it is much more likely you find one of the journalists who uncovered the story dead (by suicide of course).

all noise no signal wrote:

"Highly likely" is not a yes, its frustrating when the justice system doesn't speak in absolutes especially in these kind of cases.

It either was or wasn't or it clouds any judgement.

Regardless the ban should of been a lifetime on the admittance of using EPO, zero tolerance.

Agreed. Let's not forget that Schwazer wasn't just banned twice by the IAAF - even CAS confirmed the second ban. I have zero sympathy for that drug cheat.

Now we have an Italian court claiming the Italian hero to be innocent, and WADA is going to go against said court decision. We'll see.

casual obsever wrote:

all noise no signal wrote:

"Highly likely" is not a yes, its frustrating when the justice system doesn't speak in absolutes especially in these kind of cases.

It either was or wasn't or it clouds any judgement.

Regardless the ban should of been a lifetime on the admittance of using EPO, zero tolerance.

Agreed. Let's not forget that Schwazer wasn't just banned twice by the IAAF - even CAS confirmed the second ban. I have zero sympathy for that drug cheat.

Now we have an Italian court claiming the Italian hero to be innocent, and WADA is going to go against said court decision. We'll see.

My guess is that WADA won’t want investigations into there methods and will not take action.

No wonder Wada don’t want to criminalise Doping as it will bring an end to their gravy train.

european miler wrote:

It's amazing how everyone is writing "this race walker" like he was a no one. He was a devastating talent, when he came back after the first ban he won with an amazing margin against some of the bests of the world in a prestigious meeting. He deserves respect: he cheated, he served his sentence, and then he raced (with "high rational credibility") without being on EPO.

You even have to remember that we are talking about someone who races 50K's, another reason to respect him as his contenders

Well said.

Respect all dopers and always trust what they say.

This is more than this Walker.

WADA has been exposed by the courts.

Saku did them for 12 million and Fury cost them .7 million.

Await the insurers refusing to under-right Doping controls .

Your written English is amazing.

rojo wrote:

Why in the world would anyone bother to frame a race walker?

Wouldn't it be easier to just take a photo of him with both feet off the ground?

hot weather shuffler wrote:

Your written English is amazing.

Deal with the substance.