RoYe wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
Archibald wrote:
Same here. That was really bad. Hope she will be fine.
What a finish and gold for the Dutch...but please send us the news from the sound of the mountain.
I am glad that Lizzie Armisted did not medal after skipping her dope tests.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/...-victoria-pendleton/ I'm disgusted LA was even allowed to start, who the &%@!
Misses 3 consecutive doping tests and is still racing?
Firstly it is very clear that Lizzie Armitstead made some huge errors over the last year, which have should lead to some very large questions being asked and answered. Both of herself and of her governing body. However your statement above is a long way from true.
As I understand:
Test 1: She was where she told the testers she would be, however the hotel she was in refused to allow the tester access to her room. The tester then made minimal efforts to try and find her. She was then tested the following day. That doesn't excuse her completely, but it does appear as though she was not trying to miss a test.
Test 2: There was no attempt by the testing agency to test her, so she didn't miss her test. However, there are several forms that must be completed for every day stating the athlete's whereabouts and two of those forms gave conflicting information on her whereabouts. As a result the agency were unsure as to which of two places she was in and declared this a missed test. Again, it doesn't suggest that she was deliberately trying to miss the test.
Test 3: She has just cited personal family reasons for missing this test so that doesn't really cut it for me.
I also believe that she was tested extensively over that period as well, so to claim that she missed 3 consecutive doping tests is untrue. A more correct statement would be that out of many tests (more than 20?) a hotel blocked access to her for one, an admin error meant that two testers would have been required to definitely test her and it was therefore easier to just put it down as missed (as per the rules) and therefore she actually only 'missed' one test.
However, her initials are LA, and he never tested positive, so I'm not for one minute saying that she is definitely clean. She certainly won't be gaining any marks for intelligence this year and, guilty or innocent, will likely be tainted as a drugs cheat forever more. Maybe I just want to believe that she isn't taking drugs and am being naive, but once I looked into the circumstances surrounding the 'missed tests' I changed my initial "guilty - burn at stake" verdict to "undecided".