[Closed] Armitstead and these missed tests...

Haha, so what CAS said there is that he was wasting his time with that

Guess there might have been a placebo effect...

A cyclist transfusing manipulated blood with the aim of booting oxygen transfer but getting away with on the basis that the examining authorities couldn't find definitive evidence in to the effects of a brand new technique isn't exactly cut and dried as not cheating. Legally, perhaps there wasn't enough evidence to interrupt someone's livelihood but you'd have thought trying to dope even with a placebo must be worth something 🙂 It's that beautiful world of technicalities that take you to the top (one assumes). Not many Riccos left nowadays 🙂

So your boss calls you into the office and tells you that you are fired as on 3 occasions he couldn't find you as you were not where you were supposed to be. Your a bit confused so you ask for details..
First one you were at a client's site in a meeting where you said you would be, your boss arrived at the site, forgot your name and reception wouldn't let him in for obvious reasons. You have your phone on silent during the meeting but reception know where you are and to get you if needed.
You tell HR what happened but they said who cares.

Next time your boss says a week last tuesday you didn't update your calendar during that family emergency when all hell was breaking loose, he didn't want to see you, wasn't coming to find you but you has received the company calendar policy and your in trouble.

Last one you slipped out early one day hands up your fault but it's the first time it's actually happened.

So you just pack your things and leave?

Two can play that game:

You are a top flight athlete and you have a major race the next day. Your preparation is pretty much complete you just need that final top up micro dose of EPO and you're set. Only thing is your glow time means you really don't want to be tested before 7am as you can't be too sure. So, despite your federation sending you an email reminding to notify your national ADA your room number, you 'forget' and just to be sure you put your phone on silent coz let's face it, what's the chance the vampires with come a knocking eh?

Because, and this is rub, this would not be the first time something like the above scenario has happened in cycling. Tyler Hamiltons book describes similar dodges.

And [b]that[/b] is the problem.

So your boss calls you into the office and tells you that you are fired as on 3 occasions he couldn't find you as you were not where you were supposed to be. Your a bit confused so you ask for details..

I'd not be confused as I'd already have a very good understanding of the process and how important it was to my job, with it having been part of my daily life for the past few years, and at each occasion would have been informed of my "strikes" and knew exactly where I stood with it.

A cyclist transfusing manipulated blood with the aim of booting oxygen transfer but getting away with on the basis that the examining authorities couldn't find definitive evidence in to the effects of a brand new technique isn't exactly cut and dried as not cheating.

I recall reading a few years back that Ronaldo was having blood transfusions in Switzerland. When challenged, he claimed it was to speed recovery from bruising. If you google Ronaldo and blood, now you see he is a huge supporter of blood donating. All very innocent but I doubt it.

That's why these rules need to be upheld and as clear as can be, the basic and its well known is that if you miss tests, it will be viewed negatively.

Is anyone saying she didn't have a good understanding of the process?
As stated she has only missed one test. That's why you get 3 strikes.
Test one ukad didn't do their bit.
Strike 2 admin cock up which it's a massive leap to suggest it was intentional or to hide anything.
Strike 3 missed test along with probably hundreds of other athletes.

...And that is the problem.

Whether or not the first "miss" was her fault, she would have known it was already counting. To miss the second was extremely careless. Knowing a third miss would result in all of this, you'd have thought she (and her team) would have been absolutely paranoid and determined to make sure it didn't happen. That might not make her guilty of cheating but it must call into question her professionalism and whether or not she should still be supported by BC.

@scotroutes what second test?

for UKAD.
2nd 'strike' October 2015
Despite being reported as a 'missed test' this was in fact a 'filing failure'
UKAD did not try to test me, instead this was an administrative spot check. They found an inconsistency between an overnight accommodation and a morning time slot.

Carefully missing the point there....

scotroutes - Member

That might not make her guilty of cheating but it must call into question her professionalism

But the third "incident" (not the 3rd [i]test[/i], only the 2nd) is the one where she's clear there was a big personal/emotional issue from outwith the sport. That doesn't reflect on her professionalism in general; sometimes other things get in the way or come first. And you know what? That's alright. They're not robots.

Possibly but in many ways I'd rather take the medieval witch trials than end up on the wrong side of the Internet wada.
The outcome is she is able to race the Olympics, is not banned or accused of taking ped. If she had gone to cas a while ago none of this would be public knowledge. Maybe time to move along.

Problem is now despite being completely untrue people think she missed 3 tests.

but it must call into question her professionalism and whether or not she should still be supported by BC

I have a rant about that and threaten to go private!

But then other female cyclist have got a bit stroppy in recent years, and found that basically that's career over.

Problem is now despite being completely untrue [s]people[/s] [b]paranoid cycling fans[/b] think she missed 3 tests.

At a guess most of the general public will just assume its OK, mentiond it to my wife at breakfast, her response: "we were talking about this in work, but she's been cleared so its all fine isnt it, sounded like a storm in a tea-cup, plus Geraint Thomas says she's fine"

It seems just to be long term cycling fans that have the default assumption of guilt (for debatably good reason )

I've already pointed it out, but still folks are ignoring it - she hasn't officially missed 3 tests, only 2, CAS (who have a lot more evidence than anybody on here or twitter) have ruled she was available for the other one. Though it now seems one of those 2 she missed wasn't a test and she wasn't scheduled for testing and if anything it's a system failure for which the athlete is held responsible (rightly because it has to be that way, but the system should be better).

I'm not being funny right but if some some ....no wait a minute any governing body expected me to be at their beckon call and expected me to be telling them where I am and what im doing I'd be taking a big shit in a jiffy bag and forwarding it on to the head of the org.....then stop doing anything related to that kind of pastime professional or otherwise

[i]I'm not being funny right[/i] but you were never going to be a professional athlete really, were you?

I think this one's running and running because nobody has any real idea if she's on the juice - and there's a very understandable "once-bitten-twice-shy" attitude among some followers of the sport.

Armitstead comes across in interviews as diffident, very determined and not really a people person - so I can see how she might have rubbed her competitors up the wrong way already.

The filing error one is fair enough, the rules were broken - but it signals needless complexity in the system - and it doesn't make sense that she'd deliberately "throw" a test when the odds were heavily against her being tested on that date anyway (and indeed she wasn't).

My understanding of doping (based mainly on Tyler H's book, I admit) is that she'd need to be microdosing with EPO regularly, not just on one specific date.

In short - it doesn't make sense as a strategy for cheating.

it signals needless complexity in the system

I think the auditing that caught her is designed to stop athletes gaming the system, so complexity is probably unavoidable. For example, if you keep changing your test window at the last minute, the pattern will be spotted and you will be investigated.

Good point, I guess test location could be different to overnight location if an athlete listed a training facility or similar rather than hotel or home.

So am I being naive in thinking some kind of "have you made a mistake here?" check might be useful where the overnight and morning test locations are thousands of miles apart? Is there a potential loophole there?

Tax. Office in Oz is looking at the "are you sure" type stuff. Apparently it deters people being a little cheeky with the truth. Sounds like as the issue was picked up by a manual audit the 2 systems can't even talk to each other. Anyway I'm off flog my tinder style app to ukad "bing" your tester is nearby, meet me in the toilets I'll bring the cup and needles 😉 😉

As I wrote in an earlier post - the system shouldn't permit an athlete to enter multiple locations for a given time. Data entry is naturally prone to error so everything should be done to minimise the chances of such errors. It's a bit harder to automatically check that two locations aren't impossible to be in due to the time taken to get from one to the other.

Worth noting that CAS only let her off because of the 1st test. They didn't accept her excuses for missing the 2nd & 3rd. Which begs the question are they still 'live' and is she only one missed test away from a ban still?

inrng as usual has a good take on it all:

[url= http://inrng.com/2016/08/armitstead-whereabouts-ukad-british-cycling/#more-29585 ]Inrng: Lizzy Armistead[/url]

Which begs the question are they still 'live' and is she only one missed test away from a ban still?

I would assume so, at least until October this year.

inrng as usual has a good take on it all:

Linked to in my first post 🙂 Though some of the comments are actually worth a trawl through.

As I wrote in an earlier post - the system shouldn't permit an athlete to enter multiple locations for a given time. Data entry is naturally prone to error so everything should be done to minimise the chances of such errors. It's a bit harder to automatically check that two locations aren't impossible to be in due to the time taken to get from one to the other.

But its not multiple locations for a given time; it's multiple locations for similar times. Very different. i.e. overnight at your home in wigan, 10am-11am at the Manchester velodrome. There could however be some sort of failsafe that calculates the straight line distance between the two and if over a 'normal' distance gets the athlete to confirm this was not an error - 'Did you really want to enter a test location 680km from your overnight location? y/n'

There could however be some sort of failsafe that calculates the straight line distance between the two and if over a 'normal' distance gets the athlete to confirm this was not an error - 'Did you really want to enter a test location 680km from your overnight location? y/n'

It sounds like this checking was the function that the chap at BC was meant to be performing for Lizzie, but left his job and no one told her.

Seems like there's loads of technological solutions to this yet the system for whereabouts still seems to be held together with chewing gum and lollysticks. Surely someone could write an app for very little time / effort for BC or UK Sport, even for the World. It's in no-one's interests for people to 'fail' tests for whereabouts; the testers want to be able to find people and the athletes don't want to miss them - or if they do, then it'll be a far higher chance that it's for nefarious reasons.

For me the spec for the app would be

1/ distance checking - as above, an 'are you sure?' message if you say you'll be more than a few km apart for your general whereabouts vs your defined hour
2/ A simple yes-no alert, say 12 hours and again 5 mins before your defined hour - click to confirm or it gives you time to amend, hence avoiding admin errors.
3/ A silent override to turn your phone on to loud for the defined hour.

Doesn't seem hard? I bet someone on here could do it.

yet the system for whereabouts still seems to be held together with chewing gum and lollysticks

This seems to be a common theme on this thread from people who've never seen or used the system (I've not seen or used it!)

That bit is odd, she claims he'd left 3 weeks prior and lets say he knew he was leaving for a week prior, then how come if they had 'regular' contact, she didn't know? It just feels like she is trying to shift the blame unfairly onto someone else, especially as she named him in person in her statement, she needn't have done that.

True, I'm only going off anecdotes. But the distance one seems like an indicator; there's such a thing as poka-yoke used in industrial processes, etc. that makes it impossible to make a simple error like that. It would be easy to do the same here, create an error message and problem is avoided. If basic stuff like that isn't programmed in, then it doesn't say 'state of the art' to me.

[edit] Going further - with phones tracking locations a simple alert to say that you're not in the location you said you'd be / x miles from where you said you'd be would be easy too?

I'm not being funny right but you were never going to be a professional athlete really, were you?

If I said could have been till I was run over by an articulated lorry would you believe me, the year learning to walk ****ed that ?

I was referring to the attitude rather than the physical capability...

I was referring to the attitude rather than the physical capability...

oh **** no it was never going to happen , honestly im told very often if I could keep my ****ing mouth shut and learn people skills I would probably rip a lot of trees up with what I can do...but hey ho, wear sunscreen

I'm not being funny right but if some some ....no wait a minute any governing body expected me to be at their beckon call and expected me to be telling them where I am and what im doing I'd be taking a big shit in a jiffy bag and forwarding it on to the head of the org.....then stop doing anything related to that kind of pastime professional or otherwise

See?

On the keeping track and attitudes etc. I spend a fair bit of time travelling with work. I've been corrected by checkin at the airport as to where I'm going, one night I hopped in a taxi and asked for the hotel chain for the next city, I've been about where all you do is rely on somebody to tell you where to go as all your concentration is on racing etc. I bumped into Chris ball and cedric gracia in Feb, they had both been round the world at least once by then I think. You are relying on people to keep you going and on track at that point.

I understand that too - I've worked with people who don't know where they'll be next and rely on an old style PA to hand them tickets and an itinerary on a weekly basis, and on there being a person at the other end who'll hold a sign with Mr Jones written on it who'll do the same there.

If you can't organise yourself, and some people can't, and your livelihood depends on it then you need someone who'll do it for you. Or in this case, something.

It only relies on being in the place you said you'd be for an hour a day, and given you can change where that place is right up to that time - I struggle to see how that can't be managed.

Armistead is World Champion. AFAIK, being World Champ takes, amongst other things, attention to details and the rules.

I can't say Armistead has doped or transgressed in some way. But her apparent attitude and statement smack of an arrogance and a disregard for her current status wrt testing.

Statements about going to Rio, head high, doesn't come across well, imo.

See

See what? Is it because I've neglected to put a note in saying analyse this?

So am I being naive in thinking some kind of "have you made a mistake here?" check might be useful where the overnight and morning test locations are thousands of miles apart? Is there a potential loophole there?

The ADAM website suggests that they do actively work with athletes to make sure the data captured is correct; e.g. they will query your future schedule if you have recorded future foreign competition but don't have foreign accommodation recorded.

Creating a technological solution that is flexible enough to record the complex behaviour of international athletes, but which can also warn athletes and somehow stop them from entering conflicting information would not a trivial task at all. Think about what is required and all the possible scenarios and you will soon realise no one could just knock up a wee app.

Armistead is World Champion. AFAIK, being World Champ takes, amongst other things, attention to details and the rules.

I can't say Armistead has doped or transgressed in some way. But her apparent attitude and statement smack of an arrogance and a disregard for her current status wrt testing.

I tend to agree, actually. I don't think there is anything particularly unusual about her personal circumstances, she's been a pro for several years so knows the score, and her "I've always tested clean" defence was truly risible. She's gone down considerably in my estimation.

Agreed. The "I've never failed a drugs test" reminds me of someone...

Arrogant beyond belief, and her presence at the Olympics is IMO now damaging for cycling.

Arrogant beyond belief, and her presence at the Olympics is IMO now damaging for cycling.

Very simplistic to pick that line (though god knows why she wrote it, the idiot!) and proclaim that she's the new Lance.

Can you explain how she hoped to profit from miss #2? If it was really a date that she'd planned to take EPO, why not just ignore the doorbell in the unlikely event of a test that day?