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Lizzie Armitstead wins 2015 UCI Road World Championship (copyright Britishcycling.org_.uk).jpgUKAD: Armitstead didn't challenge 'missed' test when it was notified to her
UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) says that world champion road cyclist Lizzie Armitstead did not challenge challenge the first of three missed out-of-competition drugs test last year when it was notified to her.
The 27-year-old, who rides for Olympic gold in the road race at Rio on Sunday, was provisionally suspended last month after missing two further anti-doping controls in the past 12 months.
Under Article 2.4 of the World Anti-Doping Code 2015 Armitstead, who accepted she was at fault for the two subsequent violations, faced a ban of up to two years.
> Armitstead faced two year ban after three missed drugs tests
However, she challenged the first violation at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), claiming that the UKAD testing official had not followed the correct procedure when he arrived at the hotel in Sweden where she was staying before racing for her Boels-Dolmans team.
According to a statement released this morning on behalf of the rider,
CAS ruled that the UKAD Doping Control Officer had not followed required procedures nor made reasonable attempts to locate Armitstead. CAS also ruled that there was no negligence on Armitstead’s part and that she had followed procedures according to the guidelines.
Armitstead undertook in-competition testing the following day, as leader of the UCI Women Road World Cup.
The independent panel of leading legal experts from CAS promptly and unanimously cleared Armitstead of the asserted missed test.
That initial missed test took place on the morning of Thursday 20 June last year. Armitstead had correctly logged her location for that day on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s ADAMS Whereabouts management system as the hotel where her team was staying.
The UKAD official reportedly arrived at the hotel and requested Armitstead’s room number, without explaining the purpose of the visit, and hotel staff declined to give out the information.
One attempt was made to contact the rider via her mobile phone, but it was set to silent while she slept.
The other two missed drugs tests took place respectively on 5 October 2015 and 9 June 2016, with Armitstead accepting responsibility for both, meaning she cannot afford another one within the next two months.
The statement issues on her behalf said the first of those was due to “an administrative oversight” in logging her Whereabouts, while the second resulted from a last-minute change of plans due to family illness.
Nicole Sapstead chief executive of UKAD, pointed out that Armitstead had been informed of the first two alleged Whereabouts violations at the time they were recorded, but chose not to challenge them, even though a third would automatically trigger disciplinary proceedings.
She said: "We respect the outcome of the CAS hearing against Elizabeth Armitstead.
“When UKAD asserts a Whereabouts Failure against an athlete, the athlete has the opportunity to challenge the apparent Whereabouts Failure through an external Administrative Review, before it is confirmed.
“Only when three Whereabouts Failures are confirmed is the case then put through an independent review to determine whether the athlete has a case to answer for a violation of Article 2.4 of the World Anti-Doping Code.
“Ms Armitstead chose not to challenge the first and second Whereabouts Failures at the time they were asserted against her.
“At the CAS hearing, Ms Armitstead raised a defence in relation to the first Whereabouts Failure, which was accepted by the Panel.
“We are awaiting the Reasoned Decision from the CAS Panel as to why the first Whereabouts Failure was not upheld.”
She added that knowing the location of athletes for out-of-competition testing “is a vital component of our intelligence-led testing programme,” and that they “have a fundamental responsibility to make themselves available and accessible for testing anywhere and at any time … [including] … providing sufficient information to be located for testing.”
Acknowledging that mistakes can be made or plans changed at short notice, Sapstead underlined that UKAD “provide a huge amount of support to athletes throughout their time on the Whereabouts programme to ensure the information they provide is accurate and submitted in a timely manner,” as well as “additional, escalating support to athletes who incur Whereabouts Failures which is tailored to their specific needs.”
She concluded: “It is important to note that we will not publicly disclose provisional suspensions, or disclose details of cases, until an anti-doping rule violation has deemed to have been committed, at which point information will be published on our website.
“This is to ensure that the rights and privacy of everyone involved are respected and to ensure the case is not unnecessarily prejudiced.”
Armitstead, who won silver in the road race at London 2012 – Team GB’s first medal of the Games – was reportedly represented in her CAS appeal by a legal team supported by British Cycling.
But as blogger Inner Ring points out, the funding model of British Cycling, which relies on meeting Olympic medal targets, “sets up an obvious conflict of interest with a governing body’s financial interests becoming aligned with that of a rider rather than the more neutral position a sports administration is supposed to take.”
The blogger also questioned the reasons given for Armitstead’s withdrawal from La Course de la Tour de France, which took place in Paris on 24 July, reported at the time to be so she could focus on the Olympics – although it is clear now that she could not have ridden anyway, since she was provisionally suspended from 11 July.
Rower Zac Purchase, who won gold in the lightweight double sculls at Beijing in 2008 and silver in the same event in London four years ago, was among athletes commenting on Twitter about the news concerning Armitstead.
He said: “Given huge amount of resources @ their disposal, having multiple missed tests/filing failure is a monumental cockup! Imagine what we would be saying if she was Russian … #NotWorthIt #KeepSportClean.”
In June last year, three-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome admitted he had missed an out-of-competition test which he said was due to staff at a hotel he was staying at with his wife Michelle refusing to let anti-doping officials see him due to a policy of not allowing guests to be disturbed.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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55 comments
Probably not The Mail.
I suspect that there's a lot of valid detail that simply won't make it into any press story - as so often is the case you'll need to read the full CAS judgement and form your own view.
It'd be interesting to see how many 'whereabouts' tests she was subject to in the relevant period - it seems to suit some agendas to imply that these were the only three and that she's therefore gone untested.
I'd have thought detailing your hotel room no would have been an essential part of your 'whereabouts' when staying at a hotel. Especially when it can be updated quickly via an app.
Actually, that's one point which I'm not sure she could do much about and might not be expected to since the hotel might not have the room number till the day she arrives. If she's there for one night then she cannot update ADAMS in time. A bit of a get out and one that has been abused (see Chris Horner's post Vuelta hotel change).
It's interesting how they have minimalised what is required for the whereabouts test. You would think from what she has said:
But when you realise that she had to supply the address, and a time when she would be available it seems a little hard to understand that she turned her phone off, and did not mention to hotel staff that she would be available to anti-doping control.
I also doubt that the tester only tried to gain access once. Let's put it this way, he got up at the crack of dawn to do his job, so it would seem pretty dumb to just wait 5 minutes to see her. I'm betting he was there for the whole hour.
And I find the whole issue of her waiting till she got popped a third time to appeal the first time Implausibly risky. Why leave it to chance that CAS will get you clearance, when they may 'equally' throw the book at you for being so 'stupid'.
Perhaps they should call her 'Silly Armitstead'.
Armitstead's comments read as though they were written by a lawyer and are a masterclass in blame shifting. Maybe the women's peloton is catching up with the men's at last.
Interesting to see what Nicola Cooke had to say. Also didn't know that initially it was 3 missed tests in 18 months, but they made it even easier to 3 in a year. So basically you'd have to be pretty shady to fall foul of the three strikes rule, especially given how lax they are about allowing changes to be made to wherabouts.
http://nicolecooke.com/news/
I'm probably in the minority here but it seems to me that UKAD did mess up the first test. Obviously a hotel isn't going to give out a room number to fans these days (not that long ago it was easy enough to get). Presumably UKAD didn't want to lose the element of surprise? I like how people assume that Lizzie didn't tell the hotel staff to let her know if UKAD arrived - a moot point if they don't tell them who they are.
As for having your phone on silent, I do the same every night.
A moot point? Some times it doesnt matter even if they do announce who they are.
[Source]
No reason not to have it set to vibrate, espcially if you know that you might be contacted for testing at any time.
I can be on call out for my work so I might put my phone on silent so as not to disturb my partner but I make damn well sure that if something goes down, I can be reached
It's difficult to know, isn't it? Either she has been dodging the tests, or it's just an unfortunate series of events. Either way, as a cycling fan, after something like this, there's always that nagging doubt at the back of your mind after any performance - which is a shame, especially if she's clean.
The CAS decision with the full facts isn't out, but reporting seems to be that the testers not only asked the front desk, but also _phoned_ Lizzie on the number she gave as her contact in ADAMS but couldn't get an answer. However, she says she'd turned it to 'silent' and so didn't hear it.
Why on earth did she turn it to silent, for the time _she_ would have given as being available (0600)?
Further, even if that was an unfortunate mistake, you'd think that a top-level athlete with 1 strike would go "Right, better be super-careful now!". However, no, she missed the _next_ test too for "administrative" reasons (?) which she apparently does not dispute.
So then she's at _2_ strikes. She _must_ know that 1 more in the same year and she's up for a 4-year ban. At point you'd surely think that any clean elite athlete would be going "Holy fuck, I'm not moving an inch without telling WADA, not for _any_ reason! My career and reputation are *on the line* here!"? Surely?! However, no, she misses the _next_ test too, cause of a "family emergency". Only _then_ does she dispute any of the tests - and only the first apparently.
What on earth was she doing to let it get to 2 tests to begin with? And how serious a family emergency have to be to risk your entire career and reputation for? And why is "my phone was on silent" the best excuse she could find? And why did CAS accept that, UKAD want to know.
Note, ADAMS can updated in a number of ways:
- By the web site
- By SMS
- By smartphone app on your smartphone
- Email used to be possible, maybe still is.
If one report I've read is correct then it might be because she knows that contact by phone is not an approved way for the tester to contact her so there'd be no reason not to put it to silent, especially when sharing a room the night before a race.
Very serious indeed, I'd have thought. Now tell us the information that you presumably have about how serious her family emergency was.
Because it was true, perhaps, and she wasn't trying to think of an excuse?
Presumably because CAS, comprised as it is of experts on sporting law, found that LA had not done wrong and UKAD had. The same way, in other words, that CAS decides every other case: it weighed the evidence and applied the law.
It's sad to say but it appears Armitstead is up to no good.
She was tested the next day in an in competition test
If you're abusing fast metabolising hormones (e.g. EPO microdosing), then being able to give yourself 24 hours is a licence to "Dope away!". The whole reason for unannounced "any time" testing is precisely to be able to catch the abuse of very quickly disappearing substances!
So, that she was tested the next day at a competition she knew she'd be tested at means _nothing_.
Yeah a good night's sleep helps normalise your values. Testers can still see evidence of doping but they'll pass you off as negative because there is a high threshold that needs to me met for all the drugs (eg. EPO). It's hard to completely hide your dodgy bloodwork now but you don't really have to, which is what the public don't understand. You just need to get them within the thresholds, so stringing it out when you need to, even a day or two, is needed occassionally if you get a knock on the door.
You can be micro dosing EPO, getting tested in the same week, and coming out 'clear'.
Ironically, the most dangerous time for dopers is when they stop taking it. Their body can rebound badly triggering a spike in values and it's more obvious then that something was up.
BTW. If you follow UKAD on Twitter, you'll see that one of their most common tweets is to say that ADAMS is down.
The UKAD official reportedly arrived at the hotel and requested Armitstead’s room number, without explaining the purpose of the visit, and hotel staff declined to give out the information.
You would think that when top level international athletes stay in a hotel, especially during a competition, there would be a short discussion making sure access is given to officials, especially highly scrutinized sports like cycling where regularly proving you are clean is such a big deal.
Just going to bed without telling staff, putting your phone on silent and leaving it to chance - yeah what could possibly go wrong?
You'd think, wouldn't you. I used to work in a hotel and, quite rightly, no way would we give out - or even say out loud - someone's room number. And you can't expect any number of reception staff to be experts in validating an ID card produced.
But there are easy ways around this: if I was her (team) management I would be specifically telling the staff "if someone comes and asks for one of the athletes, phone this number" - and have a mobile that one of the staff will leave on at all times. That member of staff can verify the person, and you don't have this trouble.
Or, of course, if you've told ADAMS that you'll be at Hotel Super Limpio from 0600-0700, set your phone to come off silent at that time. Magic.
Indeed you would ~ it's not like it's her job or anything....
I've no idea about the merits, or otherwise, of this particular case. But if I were an up-and-coming young athlete, I would never tire of slagging off the preceding generations whose inveterate cheating made necessary this absurd whereabouts system and draconian sanctions for mere admin errors. This is why Armstrong and his like should never be forgiven.
Perhaps UKAD should explain why they asserted Armitstead had missed the first test, when actually they had failed to carry it out. There should have been no need to involve CAS as there were no grounds for sanction.
I am not surprised the hotel declined to tell the tester Armitstead's room number if he hadn't told them who he was. I'm only surprised that they didn't call the police!
If the appeal was held on the 21st, and the provisional ban lifted as a result, why would that then non ban have prevented her riding on 24th at La Course.? Mindset not withstanding, Just need to be careful & accurate with dates and facts on this imo
presumably you can't just rock up on the day if you fancy it, she would have had to register some time in advance
which is perfectly reasonable point, but she was on a provisional start list, I think the top 10 ranked UCI riders automatically get invited to all the UCI womens tour events anyway, but regardless Boels only announced that change on the 22nd, it wasnt that she was never on the starting list, they made a last minute rider change, so last minute some of the media were still tipping her as a race favourite in race previews on the Saturday.
"We respect the outcome of the CAS hearing against Elizabeth Armitstead." but we feel the need to issue a statement which suggests a bit of negativity towards the athlete in question.
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