Armitstead and these missed tests…

I’d like to cut her a bit of slack, but given the problems in professional sport I think you have to be naive to accept her defence without having some reservations.

guilty until proven innocent.

that’s how it works for drug cheats and kiddie fiddling, at least.

was also going to say that TdF this year seemed strangely devoid of drug related issues. only one I noted was one of the stage winners being told not welcome at the olympics, but that’s due to an old offence.

turned the corner? or another loads of poopoo about to hit the fan?

There is no way I could manage that discipline in my life!

You could say that level of discipline and attention to detail is the sort of stuff a professional athlete’s life is likely built upon.

Maybe being more open about missed tests is the way forward, a week’s grace then missed tests are posted, that way there’s no hiding and you don’t get the whispers and innuendo that you do with the current setup. It would concentrate the minds of those athletes who miss a test.

Innocent till proved guilty…..

But one does wonder……………………………

It was broken by the daily mail and ordinarily I couldn’t give a shit what they think, especially when the whereabouts system is so onerous and there really is very little money and infrastructure around women’s cycling to help them with this stuff unlike mens BUT the response from her peers has been pretty damning. No ormerta there. Her peers think it stinks and I am inclined to listen to them.

BUT the response from her peers has been pretty damning. No ormerta there. Her peers think it stinks and I am inclined to listen to them.

Interesting. Who’s said what?

After missing the doorbell for the first time ANY human being would say ‘mate BANG AS HARD YOU NEED TO ON THE DOOR’.

If my job, career and mortgage relied on such a visit guess what?

LOL. Most riders won’t know which hotel they are going to be in a week in advance. Let alone 3 months. And in the men’s side of things most riders have a PA or team admin to fill it in for them. They have hotel bookings and race schedules in front of them. Most of the women have little or no support. Even within the BC organisation.
not really. Most pros aren’t particularly smart. Or organised. Or attentive to detail. They don’t get time to develop the skills. Too busy training.

BUT the response from her peers has been pretty damning. No ormerta there. Her peers think it stinks and I am inclined to listen to them.

Interesting. Who’s said what?

Yes please elaborate, I don’t have time to trawl Twitter so can you just do it for us.

😉

So they’ve got to designate an hour every day for anti doping, and can change this on an app on their phone up to a minute before that hour,yet she was asleep with her phone on silent during that hour? That doesn’t make sense to me. At best that’s very silly at worst, well…

Let alone 3 months

You can update it the night before using the phone app.

As said, a huge number of pro’s across a wide range of disciplines of various levels of professionalism manage ok.

Also as world champ and the current dominant rider and Olympic favourite, you’ve got to figure you’re going to be pretty high on the testing list.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/riders-react-to-the-lizzie-armitstead-case/

Prevot, Compton and a few others I don’t know.

maybe the glow made LA turn the phone to silent……

Missing one is fair enough but for christ’s sake she is a PROFESSIONAL athlete she knows the rules.

Missing 3 sorry she would e out of the team

She can prove her innocence she had the chance label her a doper or a suspected doper its up to her to clean up her reputation after ,she had the opportunity and literally couldnt be arsed to piss it away

As said, a huge number of pro’s across a wide range of disciplines of various levels of professionalism manage ok.

except for the 20 something percent who are currently on one or two strikes

maybe the glow made LA turn the phone to silent……

Clever. Also, I am now reading LA as both Lance and Lizzie. Same same.

Notable difference from the article stoner linked that they “couldn’t contact him by phone [because that’s forewarning]” yet they tried to call armistead.

She could, as has been noted above, easily have given her room number up to 60 seconds in advance (and I’d assume at any point in the hour too if they try back at 15 minute intervals though that it’s conjecture on my part) also i don’t believe you can put the room phone on silent in any of the hotels I’ve stayed in – though I’ve not tried – and i would expect reception to try that method even of they weren’t willing to give her room details.

It stinks, its not difficult for most people to know where they will be an hour a day and i’d venture almost none of us have a life as prescribed as a top athlete.

http://www.ukad.org.uk/news/article/chaperone-profile

its not that hard and considering you can get from one side of the world to the other in 24hours very difficult to believe she was not capable of organizing her affairs.

What was she doing chairing a COBRA meeting? even call me dave was contactable!!

I like Chloe Hosking’s tweet.

It stinks

Devil’s advocate; if I was a doper and knew I might need to miss a test somewhere because of the risk of testing positive, I’d jump all over the chance to get my 3 strikes reinstated over an obvious failed protocol missed test. Even if she was glowing (as i believe the vernacular goes) and so deliberately avoided the test to then be handed it back – you’d jump at it.

I subscribe to the theory that if there’s the option between conspiracy and screw up, it’s almost always a screw up. Certainly until evidence comes forward to suggest otherwise, and there must be dozens of tests taken given her profile in her favour. It still sucks that it wasn’t dealt with immediately, and then to miss further ones is in the circumstances unforgivable, but it doesn’t yet say to me drugs cheat.

Not saying a ban isn’t in order – them’s the rules and she didn’t fulfill them, and the sudden family illness is already an allowed excuse, that’s why they give you 3 strikes / year. But the ban should reflect the crime, not the insinuation.

TBH when the original test was missed i suspect the cost of getting lawyered up and going to CAS/UKAD to get it over turned was the major factor in not bothering. I mean, no one would be daft enough to miss two more tests would they.

Oh.

Let’s go back and get that first one dealt with them.

Should be banned, 3 strikes and out.

Theotherjonv, what stinks here isn’t the fact she may be guilty of doping and is getting away with it, its that she is guilty of breaking the rules re where abouts, not once, not twice but three times and only now that it threatens her career is it that she sees fit to call into question one of those instances. An instance which, had it made the press at the time, could have easily ruined her reputation then. Shes responded not to it being unjust but to the consequence.

Devils advocate on my part here but, going to CAS immediately would likely have meant evidence could be presented then that can’t now. The hotel receptionist won’t remember the conversation with the tester now but may have then. The tester will remember not being able to gain the info they needed but surely won’t have recorded “i made insufficient effort to make contact” and i doubt would have recorded the conversation with reception verbatim so now can probably only say “i don’t remember if i told the receptionist i was with anti doping or not”. Months down the line it would be easy to create doubt whereas at the time it could have been quite cut and dry

But the ban should reflect the crime, not the insinuation.

The ban for missing tests should always be worse than the ban for getting caught. If it’s not, and you think your going to fail, then you just miss the test. That’s a general rule, not just for either LA.

It would be interesting to actually see the CAS findings. I can’t remember who it was, but I did read one a few years back, and it basically said “you got away on a technicality you cheating bastard” (a bit like the Sharapova one, while she was found guilty, the full content was a lot more damming than the summation)

As above, challenging the test takes a lot of time effort and money. She may well have been advised to hold off as they where confident of winning so don’t spend the money (£30-50k?) unless you really have to.

As for her competitors making a fuss ? Gamesmanship, sour grapes ? I have many French friends who think thewhile team GB / Sky outfit are on the sauce as they keep winning

Lizzie’s issues aside; CAS UKAD don’t exactly seem on the ball in these scenarios. If it was my job to go get a sample from a high profile athlete, then having made the trip to the hotel I might be a little more persistent than trying the phone and then seemingly giving up. Maybe try, the team manager, the team doctor, the team mates, etc etc.

Whilst it maybe the responsibility of the athlete to be available for testing surely they should also make a concerted effort to get the tests done and put any questions to bed.

I think you are mixing up CAS and UKAD.

Yup, good point! UKAD it is.

Missing these tests really doesn’t do her image as a clean cyclist any good at all.

I must say that I find it quite strange how she was suspended from competing but BC seemed to keep it very quiet. Surely they must’ve known that it would all come out at some point and all end up looking incredibly suspicious?

Phillip Deignan and Pauline Ferrand-prevot on Twitter…..

Fran Millar needs to take his phone off him.

With respect to the matter of not challenging the first missed test finding at the time being due to costs, one of the cyclingnews articles states ‘It’s relevant to note that athletes can challenge the missed test right away (and do not need to go to CAS and spend money to do so)’

Phillip Deignan and Pauline Ferrand-prevot on Twitter…..
Fran Millar needs to take his phone off him.

Now deleted as nothing there, Fran got in touch, what did he say?
Edit, found it. He went deep there, very deep. You’d have thought Sky would media train people better wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t be the first time Fran’s had to order some tweets deleted!

It’s worth noting that as for it not getting out until now that’s actually the system working for once isn’t it? For once there was no leak, at least not until the very last minute.

LOL. Most riders won’t know which hotel they are going to be in a week in advance

really

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/calendar/

How is it cycling news have a good idea of where everyone is going to be then?

I’d probably even hazard a guess a hotel or team buss nearby

Getting nasty…!

The married man in question being MTB fast person Absalon.

Three strikes is a significant event, whatever the reasons, and I think there are some important questions to be asked about this story, but they shouldn’t be obscured by a lot of irrelevant noise.

I don’t see any evil conspiracy to conceal the case. It went through due process, and there is no reason why it should have been publicised before that process was completed.

As previous posters have suggested, the simplest explanation for not challenging Test 1 earlier is that Armistead wasn’t expecting two more failed tests, so why bother with the significant expense, admin and legal process involved in appealing? Just chalk it up to experience and move on. You might argue that Armistead wouldn’t be worried about one strike because she’s clean, or if you think she’s been naughty, because she was confident she wasn’t going to be caught by a dope test.

I can follow the narrative for Test 2 and Test 3. If you read Tom Fordyce’s article and comments by other athletes, logging all the details of your future location and managing changes is not a trivial task. Michael Hutchinson gave an example: Would you know the out of hours door access code for your accommodation two weeks in advance? It’s part of your job as an athlete, but people will make mistakes. Sometimes stuff just happens, like Armistead’s reported family emergency, and the probability of such an event is not influenced by previous missed tests.

It’s the story around Test 1, as it has been reported, that is a bit puzzling. It seems odd that a UKAD tester goes all the way to Sweden and then appears to make such a limited effort to locate Armistead. As pointed out by others, there’s also a conflict between the reported attempt to contact her by mobile, and Tom Fordyce’s piece which states that athlete’s mobile numbers cannot be used by testers because they could give prior warning. Possibly just sloppy reporting by the Daily Mail (perish the thought) but it would be interesting to have a clearer view of what happened at Test 1

With respect to the matter of not challenging the first missed test finding at the time being due to costs, one of the cyclingnews articles states ‘It’s relevant to note that athletes can challenge the missed test right away (and do not need to go to CAS and spend money to do so)’

That’s interesting. However, even if it’s easy to challenge the test right away, I find it hard to believe it’s straightforward taking that challenge to conclusion without money, time and lawyers. Surely CAS aren’t just going to reply by email saying you are in the clear!

And in the men’s side of things most riders have a PA or team admin to fill it in for them.

Also for this, wasn’t it Cav who had an assistant cock up doing this for him resulting in one missed test and a load of PR grief. I’m sure I recall him saying that it’s now about the only bit of admin he does himself and makes sure it’s 100% accurate given that his career, livelihood and reputation rests on it.