From the CYCLINGNEWS forum: How Hard it REALLY IS to miss a test, they will track you down at DisneyWorld(tm)

The other thing that strikes me about the idea of three missed test results in a sanction is that it seems to effectively say to an athlete "you are free to miss two tests when it suits you". A school near me has a behaviour policy where if a child misbehaves in a lesson he or she gets a 'warning', if they get three warnings they get a detention, so what do the kids do? They misbehave twice each lesson with impunity, because they have effectively been told they can misbehave twice without any consequence; thus it is a system that actually tolerates misbehaviour.

We have been through the agony of a missed test. Let me tell you, your heart stops when that letter shows up certified mail. Thankfully it was a mistake on the part of the tester (they did not read the whereabouts form correctly) and the strike was dismissed after the correct paperwork was completed. How Lizzie let her missed test slide by for months is beyond me. We were walking on eggshells for days and were constantly calling and sending emails to be sure the paperwork had been received.

To miss three tests though is not normal - it's not the kind of thing that just happens. She missed nearly 20% of all her OOC tests. She's either massively incompetent and lacking attention to detail, or she was glowing and had something to hide. Now, what are the chances that a World Champion cyclist, surrounded by a team of analysts and knowing that her whole career and reputation is riding on these tests, is so lacking attention to detail?

I have trouble believing that her self-discipline off the road is that much worse, and of course now with the knowledge of these missed tests, I find it difficult not to view her periods of invincible form alternating with sickness-related absences and withdrawals with a more cynical eye. And she's tearfully bewailing that people will think she's a cheat because of this, and protesting that she's a fundamentally honest person, right off the back of a three week period where she and everyone around her was in fact being fundamentally dishonest.

There was a psychologist(?) expert in body/language who spoke after LA revealed all on Oprah, saying that subconscious is powerful. Just like the current US/Australian swimmer media-bombers say "you were caught doping" to Russian/Chinese rivals, rather than "you are a doper" (because likely they are too, so it doesn't really distinguish them). So when LA/PR fret about whether they are "thought" to be dopers, it's really telling.

What I don't get, is why she goes on and on about the second and third tests? Why try to give excuses, except to play to the crowd? Just concentrate on where CAS agreed with you (test #1), and leave the others alone. Who cares if it was "an administrative error" rather than a "missed test" on the 2nd one? (Isn't this sort of a Hamilton-like loophole to invoke this distinction anyway?) Who cares about what "traumatic family incident" (details omitted, so why mention in first place?) caused the 3rd? Whatever happened, it counts as a missed test. Talking about #2 and #3 just makes the whole thing a bunch of self-serving drivel. She needs a new media mouthpiece.

At CAS, each side picks an arbitrator, and then these two pick a third. Who did UKAD choose (it should come out, with the Reasoned Decision)? Did they pull a "false flag" (Manchurian) maneuver, choosing someone "seemingly" on their side, but whom they "knew" would "protect" the "top athletes" like LA?

it's no longer as much about the missed tests and the validity of Armistest's excuses, as it is about the evidence suggesting (she knew) she was in the clear zone well before the CAS ruling. UKAD and BC had her back and she knew it. They just had to get their stories straight and lined up. Hence the deleted tweets. And voila, for Armistest it was back to winning races, promoting a book and preparing her wedding, all that after the third strike but before the CAS hearing.

No worries.

Why would you promote a book (due out 01-Dec-16), if you had any fear of being BANNED from the Olympics? This would be DEVASTATING to too many kingpins, so HAD to be precluded. That's how the "industry" works.

Was the CAS result "fixed"? wrote:

(she knew) she was in the clear zone well before the CAS ruling. UKAD and BC had her back and she knew it. They just had to get their stories straight and lined up.

This is a legit theory. They had to "figure out" which of the 3 misses would be deemed as struck. The third could still be handled at UKAD level (within the time limit), but seemed too dodgy and WADA might appeal. The second would require some jiggery-pokery, while the first was easy---just make the UKAD agent the "fall guy", and ensure that the hotel management either doesn't remember what actually happened, or stays clammed up.

all of this occurred in the lead up to arguably the biggest event for a UK sportsperson. Win gold and riches to follow.

Let's Cycle (women's) wrote:

exposed when CAS finally published their decision.

It wouldn't surprise me if we never see the decision. In fact, it WOULD surprise me if we DID. Normally CAS cases are not publicized unless the parties do it, and obviously LA isn't going to, and while UKAD postured about to look good for the media, my guess is they will fall in line in due time.

So we'll probably just be left with a bunch of question marks (??), as to how exactly WADA 5.6 was interpreted in its ISTI language (what does it mean for a whereabouts filing being complete enough to be able to "reasonably locate" an athlete -- is just the hotel enough?), and never know exactly what the inspector did (or did not) do.

Don't forget that LA also had her Sky Team fiance launch a social media attack of private information about her main rival Ferrand Prevot (France). I guess all is fair in love and (particularly) war?

Armitstead’s fiancé Philip Deignan, a professional cyclist himself with Team Sky and a reserve for the Irish team in Rio, had weighed into the row with a post on Twitter relating to Ferrand-Prévot’s private life.

The Tweet was subsequently taken down.

I don't doubt the whereabouts system is defrauded and testers are bribed on a daily basis.

Here we're just lucky to see some evidence of how fragile and corruptable the system is.

And in that respect the UK appears to be not much different from other countries such as Russia.

Bad press image for Lizzie wrote:

Who cares about what "traumatic family incident" (details omitted, so why mention in first place?) caused the 3rd? Whatever happened, it counts as a missed test. Talking about #2 and #3 just makes the whole thing a bunch of self-serving drivel. She needs a new media mouthpiece.

This is a standard "trick" of conmen. To "frame the conversation" by making it "off limits" to discuss something. Calling it a "family trauma" (whatever it is or not) is firstly a ploy. If it weren't worth mentioning, then it wouldn't have been mentioned. Simple.

Was the CAS result "fixed"? wrote:

]That's how the "industry" works.

having the number #1 women cyclist and biggest female media athlete in UK since paula radcilffe

be found deficient of a anti-doping rules violation would have been devastating to the sport and beyond.

so it clearly had to be stopped, after hushed up in first place not to be heard until the beneficiant result appeared

UKAD and BC made the deal shortly after the 9th, told Lizzie to delete some tweets to not upset the official story line about the family crisis, and told her to go back to winning races.

Tranquilo.

By the 15th she is racing the tour of Britain which she wins stuffing everyone and obviously in good spirits. A real big goal for the year that was. A big race you would need to do some good "preparation" for, so the missed test now looks even more deliberate.

Whatever she needed BC and UKADA to sort out, it was sorted out between the 9th and the 15th.

opaque cas wrote:

Let's Cycle (women's) wrote:

exposed when CAS finally published their decision.

It wouldn't surprise me if we never see the decision. In fact, it WOULD surprise me if we DID. Normally CAS cases are not publicized unless the parties do it, and obviously LA isn't going to, and while UKAD postured about to look good for the media, my guess is they will fall in line in due time.

So we'll probably just be left with a bunch of question marks (??), as to how exactly WADA 5.6 was interpreted in its ISTI language (what does it mean for a whereabouts filing being complete enough to be able to "reasonably locate" an athlete -- is just the hotel enough?), and never know exactly what the inspector did (or did not) do.

Are you anti-rekrunner from a parallel dimension?

Your seem to believe in some kind of lunatic conspiracy theory in women's cycling. That is totally ridiculous. Women are pure of heart, sweet, innocent, and would never engage in doper-cheater behavior that seems to be so common in male doper-cheater-lab-rat-cyclists.

There is nothing to see here.

Please go back to sleep and have nice dreams.

This is weird. It seems a little bit like the Lizzie situation.

It is just a c………..

Do you like reading? wrote:

Women are pure of heart, sweet, innocent, and would never engage in doper-cheater behavior

Unless they are from degen countries like Russia, China, Hungary, Kenya, ..., where they learn such thinbgs from their youth in male-dominated patriarchal societies.