Guesswork

How do you kill a sport? You do it by calling your sport’s greatest champion a “cheat” without proving that he had cheated. That’s what cycling seems to be going when they ban Alberto Contador for “cheating”.

For those of you who do not know of the case; Contador tested positive for the banned drug clenbuterol in 2010, however at an amount that is 400 times below what is needed for him to get any advantage from the drug. Contador says the drug came from contaminated meat, which is deemed possible by experts as clenbuterol is used on animals.

That did not matter to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Because their stupid rule state that any trace of banned substance is ground for a ban, they banned Contador from cycling for a year. This even though their own experts agreed that the amount found in Contador’s body was too small to have any effect. Contador successfully appealed against the case and got his ban lifted last year. However the WADA appeal on the lifting of the ban and the case got into the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In a ruling on Monday, the CAS said that the Spaniard was responsible for his failed doping test and banned him for the next 6 months.

Why was the ban changed from a year to 6 months you asked? In a case of covering their ass, the CAS said that Contador’s claim that the test result came from eating a bad steak and WADA’s claim that the positive test result came from a banned performance-enhancing blood transfusion were both “unlikely”. Instead, the CAS said that “most likely scenario” was that Contador took a contaminated food supplement.

That’s right. Contador is now banned because of a “most likely” scenario”! Wow! I didn’t know you can convict someone in court based solely on a “most likely scenario”. I always thought you need proof before you can convict someone of “cheating”. I mean what does “most likely scenario” means anyway? Does it mean the judges in the CAS…took a guess?

Sure sound that way to me!