DrTriKat wrote:
Did they test her at Challenge Madrid she won in September?
" Roberts has since obtained a TUE for use of the inhaler" - when?
WTF is a "public warning"? She used a banned substance without a TUE - doesn't that have real consequences?
can i be the party pooper?
i don't sense that USADA goes easy on dopers. i have had my disagreements with USADA in the past, usually over process questions, sometimes over the lightness of sentences (postal team riders not named lance), but i've generally found USADA to be among the most solid, ethical, honest, transparent, even-handed among all testing authorities. and, if you look at our history of publishing on doping and anti-doping i think you'll find that we get way more into the tall weeds of this than most, to the point where our readers yawn and roll their eyes and say, "enough already!" we've interviewed, and written about, USADA a
lot. i fear that when we start losing trust in USADA then it's game over.
about this particular issue, correct me if i'm wrong, this is a beta-2-agonist that is available for use with a TUE? the only beta-2-agonist i can think of that has been used with any regularity by cheaters is clenbuterol, which is what you give a
horse with breathing issues, and which has some (questionable) anabolic properties.
again, i'm guessing, but the threshold amounts attached to allowable drugs like salmeterol, salbutamol, albuterol are simply to keep athletes from the oral use of these drugs (i don't suspect you could hit a threshold through inhaled use only).
so, in lisa's case (and i don't know lisa and have no particular feeling about her one way or the other) she's taking a beta-2-agonist that doesn't deliver anabolic benefits; she's inhaling it (not orally taking it); it's a drug that is subject to a TUE; and where she's a candidate for a TUE (if in fact she got one); and is exactly the kind of case where, if she were an age-grouper, she would have been granted a retroactive TUE by USADA and there would have been no public warning, rather it would have been considered by USADA entirely proper for that AG athlete to use that drug. again, correct me if you think i'm wrong with any of what i'm assuming are facts.
in other words, there's a big difference between arguing "but my doctor prescribed it" in this case versus in a testosterone case.
i'm not arguing that lisa's behavior was righteous, nor that she shouldn't have this addressed by USADA; and addressed
publicly. i'm making a case that USADA is the one testing authority worldwide that has earned the right to be afforded some benefit of the doubt, and i can see how in this case they might have come to the decision they did.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman