It's interesting to hear Simpson's take on how the whereabouts system works. She states toward the end of the article, "If you miss three tests, it’s either because you’re cheating or because you’re an idiot and under both circumstances, you shouldn’t be able to compete.”
Earlier in the article we find out "As a general rule, Simpson updates her whereabouts form whenever she is traveling somewhere over an hour from her house. But on this night, she forgot. The following morning, the testers — for her, it’s usually one man and one woman — showed up at her house in Boulder." They called her and she explained the situation (she was in Colorado Springs) and then ended up meeting her later in Denver. She said she "doesn't recall" if they originally showed up during the 60-minute testing window, but it was the morning and her 60-minute window is 6-7am so more than likely it was during that time.
She didn't update her whereabouts and she wasn't at home where/when she said she'd be when the testers came. Going strictly by the rules, that sounds like a missed test to me, but nothing came of it because they accommodated her. Seems reasonable to me, but again if we are going by the rules that may very well have been a missed test that was never recorded as a missed test.
This was also stated in the letsrun article, "Typically, Simpson says, she’ll be tested at least once a quarter within her 60-minute window, though occasionally a tester will show up shortly afterwards. 'A lot of times they’ll come at like 7:05 and truthfully, I don’t know if that’s because they test a lot of people in Boulder and I’m just kind of on a list of people they’re trying to get there that morning and they got there a little bit later, or if it’s because they waited until 7:05 to ring my doorbell.'”
It sounds to me like USADA is making a habit of showing up right after the 60-minute testing window ends. Why are they doing this? Simpson says it happens "a lot" and it's exactly what caused Christian Coleman's potentially missed test to be reclassified as a filing failure. Can anyone explain why USADA seems to be showing up on a consistent basis right after this window has closed? That's unlikely to be happening by chance.
In general it sounds like the testers are very understanding that life is unpredictable and they'll go out of their way to make sure they can get your sample, whether it's during the time and place they had planned for or not. However, the issue with that is it leaves it up to the person doing the testing as to how accommodating they want to be. Jenny is super likeable. She's always smiling. She seems very genuine to me. I'm a big fan. But what if someone isn't likeable? What if they have resting b.tch face? What if they seem superficial whenever they are interviewed? Will a tester be inclined to be as accommodating?
The gist I got from this article is that testing is not being done strictly by the book in a uniform manner and something is going on with USADA making a habit of showing up to test right after the 60-minute window closes.
What do you think?