From AP:

LONDON -- World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound wants to investigate why Marion Jones' backup sample came up negative, clearing her of a positive doping test.

The "B" sample from the 30-year-old sprinter did not detect the banned endurance enhancer EPO, her attorneys said Wednesday. That means her initial positive result is thrown out. She was tested after winning the 100 meters at the U.S. track and field championships on June 23.

Pound said he found the inconsistent tests "disturbing."

"We are going to see how that happened, learn from it, and try to make sure it doesn't happen in the future," Pound told BBC Radio on Sunday. "The worry we have is that someone is misinterpreting things or doing things wrong.

"I suppose if our experts look at it and say on the basis of what we have seen there is no question it should have been positive, we have an opportunity to put that into play."

One of Jones' attorneys, Howard Jacobs, criticized Pound's remarks.

"From what I have heard from our experts ... it was borderline positive to start with, so although it is very unusual, I cannot say I was shocked by it," Jacobs told the same BBC program. "I would assume if the 'B' was negative, you have to assume that the 'A' was the mistake. Marion is very clear she has never taken performance-enhancing drugs and I think people should accept that."

Dick almost appears to hate sports in general, judging by his many comments of the same "guilty unless proven innocent" remarks. I am all for eliminating "cheaters" in any sport... but I have no idea what planet he hails from.

Yes, Dick Pound must hate sports. Afterall, he is only a former olympian (anyone else on this forum achieved this pinnacle of sport?) and has spent his entire life involved with sport in various capacities.

"Always shoot the messanger" - some people should use this as a signature.

The problem is Dick is not the messanger. He is the head wada this means he sends the message.

I understand that Pound might want to find out why the first test was positive, and the second negitive, I'm curious as well. But to me, this is why they have a A and a B sample, the exact reason why.

Whether he hates athletes or likes them is immaterial to this argument and to this post. What these statements are setting up could be very intriguing in court, as the Marion Jones issue has possibly opened a case from which to base this one. The statements of Jacobs and Pound could be summed up, if you will, as simply “Innocent until proven guilty vs. Guilty until proven innocent.” Now, before everyone starts to tear me a new one, this information was taken from VeloNews articles and ESPN, but not from their writers. Read these statements, together, from the articles written:

DICK POUND
Dick Pound wants to investigate why Marion Jones' backup sample came up negative.

Pound said he found the inconsistent tests "disturbing."

"We are going to see how that happened, learn from it, and try to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. The worry we have is that someone is misinterpreting things or doing things wrong.”

"I suppose if our experts look at it and say on the basis of what we have seen there is no question it should have been positive, we have an opportunity to put that into play."

HOWARD JACOBS
"From what I have heard from our experts ... it was borderline positive to start with, so although it is very unusual, I cannot say I was shocked by it. I would assume if the 'B' was negative, you have to assume that the 'A' was the mistake. Marion is very clear she has never taken performance-enhancing drugs and I think people should accept that."

the doping case against client based on "inconsistencies in the testing protocol and methodology".

"…review of 370 pages of documentation provided by the LNDD laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry, Jacobs and a team of scientific experts have found inconsistencies in the testing protocol and methodology that support Landis' innocence.”

"In our review of the documents detailing the tests on both the ‘A' and ‘B' sample, we have found evidence that supports our request for USADA to drop the doping charges against Landis," said Jacobs. "While I cannot comment on the full details of our findings, we now have the foundation for a very strong defense should the case proceed to arbitration."

Jacobs promised to invoke rules that allow athletes contesting doping charges to request that their hearing be made open to the public.

"Once again, we are asking for complete transparency in this process. Floyd has maintained his innocence from the outset and what we have found in the official document package points to a premature public conviction before all of the evidence could be considered," added Jacobs. "This is another example why the leaking of an ‘A' sample results and violating the athletes' right to anonymity is such a horrible thing. It is this exact scenario that caused the Rules governing anti-doping cases in the United States to be amended in 2004, to allow an athlete concerned about fairness to request that a hearing be opened to the public."

I don’t know what happened. What I do know is that I read Dick Pound’s comments as those of a person with an agenda (whether admirable or not), and one who may believe that the program is infallible. I think he is setting himself up for problems in defense, or, at the very least, providing ammunition for Jacobs. As for Jacobs, what exactly does a “premature public conviction” have to do with this? Public perception is exactly that—public. The public has no responsibility in how it perceives a given set of circumstances or agendas (whether you believe that or not). A media that is, by public perception, liberally or conservatively biased (depending on who you ask) provides this to them. They simply go for either side, hook, line and sinker, without any actual thought (like we sometimes do in this forum). I find the legal possibility for Floyd Landis fascinating. Its akin to a firefighter saying to a person “Congratulations, we saved your microwave!” after their house burns to the ground.

wow, Jacobs is a lawyer without an agenda - fancy that...

isn't he the same lawyer who has bled Hamilton dry and managed to come up (after attacks on the test and protocol) with the splendid 'vanishing twin' defence?

EPO degrades with time - seems fairly obvious to me that an A could be positive and then the B borderline.

love it that the word of a lawyer - paid to have his client found innocent - carries far more clout than that of the man whose job it is to try and clean the sorry mess up...

wow, Jacobs is a lawyer without an agenda - fancy that...

isn't he the same lawyer who has bled Hamilton dry and managed to come up (after attacks on the test and protocol) with the splendid 'vanishing twin' defence?

EPO degrades with time - seems fairly obvious to me that an A could be positive and then the B borderline.

love it that the word of a lawyer - paid to have his client found innocent - carries far more clout than that of the man whose job it is to try and clean the sorry mess up...
Lawyers without firms are common here. Most become president at some point...

Jacobs is a scumbag of the highest order but he didn't come up with the "vanishing twin" defense. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that a person who is positive for homologous transfusion could only be that way from 4 causes: disease, bone marrow transplant, intra-uterine transfusion or chimerism. Jacob just picked the only option open to his client, which also turned out to be the most embarassing publicly. Who hasn't made an evil twin joke in the past two years? Who knows, with Hamilton's newly found connection to Fuentes, perhaps it was the intra-uterine transfusion afterall and he was wrongly accused.. ;o)

As for EPO, my understanding is that it comes out of the body as an entact molecule and does not degrade. I read that when certain previous frozen wee samples from a certain race from 1999 were tested and the results of un-named, implicated riders were leaked to a certain newspaper in a country that shall remain nameless. The lab testing Jones' A sample said that it wasn't a slam dunk, that there was question as to whether the sample should be considered a fail but they failed it anyway in order to invoke a testing of the B sample. The protocol calls for a pass/fail answer so when things are "maybe", they fail it in order to get a second chance to test. Even Mr. Pound should know this.

EPO degrades with time - seems fairly obvious to me that an A could be positive and then the B borderline.

If EPO degrades over time (in this case, about six months), enough to take a positive to a negative, then how could they have found EPO in Armstrong's samples from 1999 (about six years)? What seems fairly obvious to you makes no sense to me.

wow, Jacobs is a lawyer without an agenda - fancy that...

isn't he the same lawyer who has bled Hamilton dry and managed to come up (after attacks on the test and protocol) with the splendid 'vanishing twin' defence?

EPO degrades with time - seems fairly obvious to me that an A could be positive and then the B borderline.

love it that the word of a lawyer - paid to have his client found innocent - carries far more clout than that of the man whose job it is to try and clean the sorry mess up...
Pound's word carries no weight because he has consistently shown himself to be an unscruplous zealot with little or no regard for evidence. If Jacobs is not credible because he has an agenda, how could you ever believe a word out of Pound's mouth? Can't see the logic.

And as I understand it, Hamilton did not argue that he had a chimeric twin, he argued that the test was not properly qualified on the false positive front in view of the chimeric twin problem. That doesn't make for as good a joke, though.

If EPO degrades over time (in this case, about six months), enough to take a positive to a negative, then how could they have found EPO in Armstrong's samples from 1999 (about six years)? What seems fairly obvious to you makes no sense to me.

I would assume that freezing the sample stops the degradation process. IIRC, one of the unknowns going into the retroactive testing of the Tour samples was whether or not they would be able to isolate EPO at all.

Pound said he found the inconsistent tests "disturbing."

I'm not a biochemist but I've seen these type of procedures done to isolate proteins. The idea that a positive A and negative B is something to cause great concern just seems like to me Pound isn't really all that familier with how these procedures are carried out or even how a "positive" is determined. Your'e talking about a multi-step process that yields a series of bands on a background that are assigned a number based on their darkness. I would think there would be a fair amount a variability in an A and B sample from a known source simply due to the testing process.

DB, I agree with what you're saying. When either of them talk, I expect that they will end their sentences with "but I did stay at a holiday inn express last night."

I am also not a biochemist (switched majors), nor a legal expert, but I keep looking at what these two sides are saying and feel that Dick Pound is possibly making his defense (or Landis' case-whichever way you look at it) that much more difficult, regardless of his intentions.

In an adversarial system such as exists in the UK and USA, a lawyers job is not to get at the truth it's to use the evidence to best support his/her case.

Pound may be a zealot but isn't it about time someone was passionate about cleaning up the sport - or are you happy for it to continue in its present quagmire? Maybe Hamilton and Landis shouldn't have cheated, then nobody could point the finger at cycling...

In an adversarial system such as exists in the UK and USA, a lawyers job is not to get at the truth it's to use the evidence to best support his/her case.

Pound may be a zealot but isn't it about time someone was passionate about cleaning up the sport - or are you happy for it to continue in its present quagmire? Maybe Hamilton and Landis shouldn't have cheated, then nobody could point the finger at cycling...Bin Laden is a zealot and passionate, and I'm not signing up for his cause either. The whole notion of cleaning up this or any other sport is a fairy tale. Dick Pound's "passion," his willingness--even eagerness--to ruin the sport and the careers of anyone in it in pursuit of that fairy tale is part of the problem, not the solution.

Pound may be a zealot but isn't it about time someone was passionate about cleaning up the sport - or are you happy for it to continue in its present quagmire? Maybe Hamilton and Landis shouldn't have cheated, then nobody could point the finger at cycling...

Maybe Dick Pound should be the first to begin following and enforcing the rules within his beloved WADA. Why are there so many leaks of information? And why no repercussions for the labs/individuals doing the leaking? I'm all for cleaning up the sport, but Pound needs to get his own house in order before shooting his mouth off. His approach is as distasteful as doping.

I think Dick Pound cares more about the propagation of the WADA than anything else.

Dave

Jones' B sample was frozen, so if it is true that the EPO degradation process is stopped, we must conclude that there was no EPO present. This leads to the next conclusion, which is that the EPO test is seriously flawed. It has shown false positives before, and now it has done so again.

which is that the EPO test is seriously flawed. It has shown false positives before, and now it has done so again.

Like I said above given the nature of the process to isolate the proteins and the way a positive isn't surprising at all that the same sample would be positive and negative if the person was doping in a manner designed to the beat the test. The only way this would be surprising is that the test was so highly reproducible that the A and B always gave the same vaules, which given it's nature seems highly unlikely or that the person's A sample was "very" positive.

In an adversarial system such as exists in the UK and USA, a lawyers job is not to get at the truth it's to use the evidence to best support his/her case.

That's my point. Regardless of whether his intentions are noble or not, what he is saying is providing support for the defense team and may end up costing him in the courtroom. He seems very concerned about WADA's viability, but all it takes is one lawyer who is halfway savvy in using words to destroy that.

He could have said something to the effect of: "We will continue to look at all facets of the testing procedure to ensure the protection of the integrity of professional sports." Yeah, its PC, but it doesn't corner his organization , which it seems that he is beginning to do.