Landis vs. anti-doping program

Cyclist Floyd Landis could not have mounted a more feeble opening defense against contentions he doped to win the 2006 Tour de France.

Sitting before news conference microphones last summer, he stammered out one excuse after another trying to explain elevated testosterone readings on lab tests that suddenly jeopardized his greatest professional triumph: He had been drinking alcohol the night before the test, he said; he was taking medication for hyperthyroidism, he added; he’d been given a legal cortisone shot to treat a degenerative hip condition, he went on.

One by one the seemingly desperate excuses eroded his credibility until it seemed it might never recover. Then, the momentum changed.

In a move reminiscent of his come-from-behind, late-stage surge to win the 2006 cycling endurance race, Landis and his defense team launched the most aggressive, expensive and public challenge ever mounted against the anti-doping establishment.

Their 10-month legal and public relations effort has attacked the science and the fairness of U.S. and international anti-doping enforcement systems.

And when three arbitrators convene their hearing into the Landis case in a moot-court auditorium at Pepperdine University today, the world anti-doping program’s own credibility will hang in the balance as much as the cyclist’s.

The arbitrators will consider a case brought against Landis by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) alleging the cyclist used illicit performance-enhancing drugs. He faces a possible two-year suspension and loss of his Tour title.

At the hearing, Landis will argue -- as he has publicly -- that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) testing lab in France made numerous errors in handling samples and interpreting test results.

For the first time since the anti-doping enforcement system was created seven years ago, one of its hearings will be open to the press and public -- subjecting its quasi-judicial process to public scrutiny like never before.

Dozens of journalists from around the world, as well as many other interested observers, have applied for credentials to attend. While athletes always have had the option to insist upon public hearings, Landis is the first to do so.

The situation represents a potential watershed for a system that has invariably wielded its power to end athletes’ careers and brand them as cheats behind closed doors.

Last December, an investigation by The Times characterized the international sports doping program as a closed, quasi-judicial system without U.S.-style checks and balances in which anti-doping authorities act as prosecutors, judge and jury and base their contentions on sometimes questionable scientific tests that they develop and certify themselves.

Because of the expense of defending themselves and the poor prospects of success, the vast majority of accused athletes who maintain their innocence have accepted suspensions or other sanctions -- allowing the system’s machinery to remain shrouded.

“Nobody’s ever gone to the mat like this over so-called positive tests that don’t meet procedural standards,” says John Hoberman, an expert at the University of Texas on steroids in sports.

Landis’ position at the top of his sport gave him the incentive to go public, but the 31-year-old Pennsylvania-born and Murrieta, Calif.-based racer says his legal and professional fees are approaching $2 million, less than half of which is covered by public fundraising.

“By the time this hearing is over, I’ll have a net worth of zero,” he said in an interview last week. Either side can appeal the outcome to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Many in the sports anti-doping establishment don’t believe Landis’ campaign is a positive development.

This month, WADA President Dick Pound of Montreal grumbled about “some athletes and entourages who like to take their case to the public before it’s been heard.... The only folks that have their hands tied are the anti-doping agencies.”

Pound, however, has publicly expressed his personal certainty about Landis’ guilt on several occasions; as a result, Landis is planning to file an ethics complaint against Pound this week with the International Olympic Committee. The IOC has previously criticized Pound for what it called his inappropriate comments. In public jousting leading to the Landis hearings, Pound has blamed Landis’ defense team for delaying the arbitration case. Landis’ attorneys, in turn, blame USADA for its failure to turn over documents requested by the defense.

Others believe the dose of daylight is overdue. “I’m against drugs in sport, but that’s totally separate from my desire for fairness and justice,” says Charles Yesalis, a leading doping researcher who is an emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. “Any time you do things in private, it’s not good.”

Landis’ strategy aims to level a playing field that is tilted against accused athletes, who often are confronted in public with leaked or incomplete test results before they are formally notified of the contentions against them. Indeed, Landis has said that he offered such a broad range of explanations for his positive test last summer because he was not yet sure what he had been accused of taking.

Landis believes his strategy has begun to deflate the anti-doping program’s image of infallibility. “I don’t feel like I’m being interrogated” and presumed guilty, he said in an interview last week.

On the other hand, he is not convinced that his strategy will succeed. “I’m a little bit worried that despite all the work we’ve done, the case is going to be decided by people who’ve already made up their minds.”

Of the three arbitrators hearing his case, Landis selected one. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which is acting as prosecutor, selected one, and a third was picked by the two arbitrators to act as chairman.

All are theoretically supposed to take an impartial view of the evidence, but there are signs that the chairman, Patrice Brunet, and the USADA appointee, Richard H. McLaren -- both Canadian attorneys -- have already aligned with each other as a majority bloc.

This month they made an important evidentiary ruling without consulting with Landis’ appointee, Bay Area lawyer and former Olympic wrestler Christopher Campbell, or even informing him they were planning to rule.

Last month, both also went to a sports conference in Beijing sponsored by several leading international sports agencies at which 15 WADA officials were in attendance, along with Richard Young, an attorney for USADA. Campbell did not attend.

Today’s hearing is the latest phase of the public campaign. Landis has posted the laboratory documentation underlying his doping allegation on the Internet, where it has been picked over by independent lab experts, biochemists and laypeople.

The cyclists also published the pre-hearing correspondence of his three-member arbitration panel, which has been pored over by lawyers and arbitration experts and measured against the standards of judicial behavior customary in American courthouses.

Some say they are surprised at how far short the system falls in its safeguarding of the rights of the accused.

“I’d been reading things about the case and saying, ‘It can’t be like that,’ ” says William Hue, a Wisconsin trial judge and recreational cyclist who has become a prolific online commentator on legal issues in the case. Once he began examining the specifics of the case, especially pre-hearing rulings by the arbitrators, he concluded, “This doesn’t look like a very just system.”

Others say that the questions Landis has raised about the French lab’s procedures may not be enough to impeach its findings.

“I haven’t seen anything to date to suggest that the French lab has misapplied the science,” says David Black, who has served as an expert witness for athletes in doping cases and is chief executive of Nashville-based Aegis Sciences Corp., a large independent doping lab unaffiliated with WADA. “I’d be surprised to learn that they do not have persuasive evidence that he used.”

Still, Landis’ attack on the French lab’s integrity has plainly unnerved WADA, which views the credibility of its 34 laboratories around the world as the linchpin of its campaign against drugs in sport.

At a news conference May 2, WADA’s Pound went out of his way to defend the lab, which is owned and operated by the French government and accredited by WADA.

“It has met some very stringent quality-control requirements,” he said. “It’s one of the leading laboratories in the world, so we have no reason to believe that what is done in that lab ... is subpar.”

A few days after Pound publicly praised the lab, however, Landis’ lawyers made public an exchange of letters between WADA’s science director, Olivier Rabin, and the lab over the lab’s erroneous accusation last summer against a competitive swimmer whose clean urine sample had been contaminated by steroids in another vial tested the same day.

Rabin rebuked the lab, demanded that it take corrective steps, and then closed the case, evidently without taking disciplinary action. WADA officials refused to comment.

The Landis hearing is scheduled to last into next week.

michael.hiltzik@latimes.com

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Landis hearing

* What: Three arbitrators will hear evidence and decide whether the cyclist used performance-enhancing drugs during the 2006 Tour de France. Each side’s witnesses can be cross-examined, and Landis is expected to testify.

* When: Today through May 24.

* Where: Pepperdine University.

* At stake: If the arbitrators rule against Landis, he would be in line for a two-year ban. He could appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as can the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency if it loses.

From the Associated Press