I am not sure the facts support this claim: "You have someone still leading a lab, who provided false testimony"

Letsrun claims that "Jarrion Lawson‘s [..] legal team was able to show that Christiane Ayotte, the head of the WADA-accredited doping control lab at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Laval, Quebec, lied while testifying during his case." (1)

However, the CAS decision in that case that that the article is based on reads, concerning Ayotte's testimony: the panel who heard the case was not "entirely persuaded by her evidence." "Thus, while the panel agrees (with respect) with many of the points made in the Appealed Decision, it is not prepared to rely on Professor Ayotte's evidence to the same effect found below." (2)

Letsrun claims that Ayotte lied, and you are claiming that she gave false testimony. That means that she made a false statement knowingly. Is there evidence for that? The Letsrun article's author does not himself know what Ayotte said or did not say during her testimony. John Gault, the author, wrote that "I do not have her exact statement to quote from," which means he is relying on reports of her testimony from the CAS decision. That decision does not say whether she lied or not or whether she gave false testimony or not. I am not sure if you have better, more relevant sources.(3)

Letsrun's claim that anyone "was able to show" that Ayotte "lied" seems like exaggeration, especially since Letsrun, literally, does not know what she said, and the report of what she said falls well short of indicating a lie, or even an accidentally false statement. Anyone relying on Letsrun's portrayal of her testimony is relying on sources that should be checked, in my opinion.

I myself do not know Ayotte in any way. Is she, or is her lab, beyond reproach or not? I don't know. But I have seen this claim, that she lied, a lot, and I have not seen any evidence for it.


Andrew Moss













(1) https://www.letsrun.com/...stimony-against-him/

(2) https://www.athleticsintegrity.org/...IAAF_FINAL-AWARD.pdf

(3) https://www.letsrun.com/...d=9944162&page=1

well, i didn't find it as interesting as you did. while i agree with his view of chavez's piece in SI, i chalk that SI piece up to the writings of a guy who really doesn't understand doping or, to be more precise, anti-doping. otherwise, it's a lot of words that, to me, betray the heartburn of an "industry pariah" who thinks he's unemployable because he, alone, has the courage to write the truth.

i say it again. it's proximity. jerry schumacher is close to shelby houlihan. so is shalane flanagan. so they are arch-certain she's clean. had the very same test generated the very same result for molly huddle, would jerry be so dead certain molly was clean?

the only thing that, in my mind, mitigates these positives is that there used to be a LOT of nandrolone busts, in our sport and in running. it took some several years before the anti-doping world would agree that nandrolone deserved a threshold, not a pass/fail. where beck is wrong, i think, is its misleading to say houlihan's result was, "well beyond the edge of culpability." threshold is, what, 2ng/ml? houlihan's was 5? dieter baumann's was, what, 80? what qualifies as "well beyond?"

three things are true:

1. houlihan got busted and is serving time in the big house. there is no other proper resolution.
2. houlihan may be innocent. unlikely, but maybe.
3. houlihan is more likely to be the victim of inadvertent ingestion. which is why i steer clear of white powders unless to solve tinea cruris/pedis.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Irrelevant of any future outcome, once an athlete is notified of an AAF they are not allowed to compete until the outcome is decided. Her outcome has been decided and a ban has been given. No way is she allowed to compete at the trials, even if she had been recently notified and hadn't been given her ban yet, she still can't compete. I have no idea what USATF are even thinking making the statement that she can, goes against the WADA rules. She would then be in breach of regulations and up for an additional ban. USATF if they allow her to race would also be in breach of rules with not great consequences.

HOLY SHIT!!! I know this dude from another forum*

Let me just say, he is an extremely heinous motherfucker





* Granted, this was many years ago, and he may have straightened his shit out, but he was FAR from a good person - and we're not talking just being a troll either [which he was] there was some IRL shit that was unacceptable

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Athletics Integrity Unit statement:

https://twitter.com/seaningle/status/1405666803959930880

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

And she’s out again….. USATF reverses allowing her to compete as AIU verdict is “final and binding”
https://www.usatoday.com/...e-course/7739717002/

Some big names (all non-nike athletes) signing this statement to USATF from the Clean sport collective: https://twitter.com/.../1405666744698425344

There's also non-long distance pro-track athletes speaking out. Who's supporting her now except from her bowerman group? USATF has to reverse at this point.

Here is a link to a searchable PDF version of the CAS decision; that, of course, raises questions about your review of it ;).

https://www.doping.nl/media/kb/6463/CAS%202019_A_6313%20Jarrion%20Lawson%20vs%20IAAF%20%28OS%29.pdf

Under "B. The Scientific Debates":

1. letsrun was literally quoting the CAS.
2. She made a statement of material fact, that was demonstrably false. Is it necessarily lying? No. Is it false testimony? For an expert witness testifying on their subject of expertise and so germane to the decision, in a way that would substantially alters a reasonable person's opinion of the truth, absolutely. Either she made the statement knowing it was untrue, had failed to properly diligence her remarks, or had such an anachronistic data point on a critical fact.
3. Given that this is civil arbitration, whether she had a duty to provide potentially exculpatory data (i.e., the 2018-2019 Trenbolone metabolite data) is questionable. However, it supports a narrative of at least biased behavior (what you expect from a drug-testing lab).
4. I think it's a significant indictment that the CAS would question the evidence provided by an expert witness so involved in the field.



A couple years ago, my buddy gave me wild pig sausages from his hunting trip. Still in the freezer; I'll have to ask if it was from a boar. Anyone want some?

I think CleanSport is made up of athletes who were either NIKE athletes who were pressured to dope, or athletes who were burned by NIKE athletes who doped - I think Kara Goucher started it?

They are not to be fucked with, from a media standpoint

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Yeah, but the CAS never quoted her, which I think was the point. We don't know literally what she said. So it takes a bit of a stretch to go from the CAS' muted finger-wagging about incorrect uses of the subjective words "low" and "rare" all the way to "she lied."

Thanks for your reply.

This is more reason than I've seen on this topic in any of the above-quoted discussions, and I appreciate it:
"Is it false testimony? For an expert witness testifying on their subject of expertise and so germane to the decision, in a way that would substantially alters a reasonable person's opinion of the truth, absolutely. Either she made the statement knowing it was untrue, had failed to properly diligence her remarks, or had such an anachronistic data point on a critical fact."

I disagree with your reading of the CAS decision -- which I also linked to ;-). However, I appreciate the attention you give to these sections of the report, and I may be convinced there's plenty to discuss about CAS's characterization of Ayotte's testimony. Letsrun's coverage plays fast and loose with a spectrum of "truth": interpretation of a fact, a statement not supported by facts, false testimony, and lying. You're parsing of those terms and concepts is much more transparent than Letsrun's original article or their sensationalist secondary and tertiary accounts of the article.

Andrew Moss

for someone who likes to yap a lot on social media, gwen is being awfully quiet.

You're right, technically. However, I give a lot of weight to an arbitration panel (CAS) directly contradicting her IAAF Tribunal statements with data made available to the CAS. In my lay experience, I've always found courts and arbitrators to be conservative in their judgements, which to me suggests that the truth is likely worse than they make it out to be.

Either way, even if she didn't lie, and just erred in providing inaccurate information for a critical piece of information, she's either incompetent/negligent or a liar. For me, both are pretty damning for an expert witness and laboratory director. Fortunately, she has some pretty captive clients who probably don't mind this sort of...behavior. :)

Seems to me that all of this expert's statements could in fact be true, depending on the definition of what constitutes a "low" level and a "high" level of whatever substance is at issue in the cited case.

Hypothetically now:

• Her lab was regularly seeing test results in the 1000 ng/ml range in the 90s.
• Since 2013, results are typically in the 50-100 ng/ml range

Given those parameters, all of her statements are now true.

True, relative to the 90s

Also true, if "high levels" is taken to mean 1000+ or even 100+
Large according to whose definition? And a 65 could easily be below 18 of 21 samples in the 50-100 range, and they could all be considered low.

Disclaimer, I have no earthly idea if a 1000 is even within the realm of possibility for this particular substance. But hopefully the point is clear even if I've exaggerated the plausible range of test results.

Yes, your point that a significant amount of mental gymnastics are required to rationalize the testimony of an expert, technical witness.

Jarrion tested at 0.65ng/ml. Her lab admits "many tests" (that weren't disclosed) below 2ng/ml in 2018/2019 from the US.

Her original premise from the Tribunal testimony is that all results are low, so it's impossible to distinguish results from incidental consumption of meat (in her words, measured in "picograms") from 'actual' dopers. From both CAS' contradictions and the unretracted statements below, that premise is incredibly in question.


The unretracted claim published by Letsrun (good thing that truth is an absolute defense) is:

2 and 3 seem to be contradictory. Or at least they seem that way to me, because I would consider the victim of inadvertent ingestion to be innocent. Perhaps others would disagree.

From this thread I've learned:

• Nandrolone can be ingested in pill form, or injected
• Only the injectable form seems to be worthwhile as a performance enhancer, as the pill exits the body much too rapidly to be of benefit
• The sanctioning body in this case ruled out injection (as I understand, due to the results of the hair follicle test, and/or subsequent clean test)

So if we can rule out injections, then it seems to me that Houlihan was either a "moron" for taking the pill form, or she was the victim of inadvertent ingestion. Giving her credit for not being a moron, by process of elimination we land on inadvertent ingestion.

To which I say, her tainted meat explanation, while obviously poorly evidenced and undeniably flimsy, is also completely understandable. Imagine finding yourself in that situation, with no idea what may have triggered the positive test, or how the banned substance came to be in your body. And you're notified of all this a month after the fact. I'd probably go scrambling for a food truck receipt, too.

My point was that the entire veracity of her testimony hinges on nebulous and undefined terms.

What constitutes "high" and "low" levels of this particular prohibited substance? And as defined by whom?

Aside from cases where athletes admit to intentionally doping (because they would have no reason to admit to something they didn't do)

we have zero reliable data about inadvertent vs. intentional doping. just because an athlete claims it was tainted meat, tainted supplements, whatever and gets off, doesn't mean they weren't lying about it.

What is more likely, the whole world is contaminated with PEDs causing "inadvertent" positives, or that a lot of athletes may be attempting to dope, in very controlled programs, either micro-dosing or trying to use a regimen where the time span they could test positive is very small and getting caught sometimes.

The two biggest things here that signal BS

1. The claim by her and her coach they "never heard of Nandralone", which if true, basically says they were willfully ignorant and perhaps would willingly have taken it (because they didn't know it was banned, according to them)

2. This story about a burrito with un-castrated boar meat in it. How many places actually serve this? How many women (not trying to be sexist) in your life have you seen eat carne asada meat from a food truck, especially the athletic ones. Like half the women I know are vegetarians and of the ones who aren't most of them don't eat pork or beef. Just the idea that she ate this is a little hard to believe. I would like to see a video of her eating such a burrito and watch her reaction to eating it.

These just seem like total red flags for guilty. Both possibly true, but the probability of both of these, plus a positive test, I mean very far out there.

Sure, could her testimony have been technically accurate? Yes, just like all the league tables presented by investment bankers.

Was it truthful? Based on the available facts, no. Did she do the best job for her client, AIU/WA? Probably. Does the fact pattern impugn her credibility? Absolutely.

a big shock;). I mean slowman is usually right about these rules things and said they didn't understand the rules if they said she could compete.

What did she say that was untruthful, based on the available facts?

It should concern a lot of people that the USATF actually thought she should be able to compete. I would guess a ton of us on this board alone understand why she couldn't, and what it would mean for people she had to race, etc. For the governing body itself to be so clueless is really crazy.

1. If I had 20 other samples with 218x (adjusting for the 0.65ng/ml result) the average result, I would construe myself (like her) as being untruthful in saying all the samples were low.
2. If my testing required detecting sub-2 to 5 ng/ml levels of substances, I would be certainly be untruthful in describing results with an 200x+ variance as all low.
3. If I were to be remiss and declare that such order of magnitude of variance failed to differentiate between incidental and intentional ingestion of substances, I would most likely be untruthful in asserting professional testing qualifications.
4. If I had numerous other samples with similar levels of the same substance or its metabolite, validating a potential affirmative defense, and I failed to disclose that, I would construe that as untruthful.
5. If I refused to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence (like my lab results), I would consider that untruthful.

Good thing she has tenure.

concerned yes, surprised no.

If you follow the leadership history of any of the governing bodies (USAT, USATF, USACycling) they are mostly a joke, just one blunder after another on everything under the sun. I mean look at US gymnastics or swimming and how they handled sexual abuse.

For some reason, most of the people who end up in leadership at these sports federations seem to be incompetent, willfully ignorant, anything you think of that would make you unqualified to lead. But maybe that isn't different than a lot of organizations;)

when i think back through all of those mandatory business ethics corporate training sessions i had to sit through I'm surprised the USTAF leadership are not very conscious of appearing to have been bought and paid for by Nike's $500M funding. We wouldn't allow reps from companies we did business with buy us anything, even something as small as a delivery sandwich for lunch, in case it raised questions about whether it could have influenced decisions on contracts in their favor. Max and co have been given $500M by Nike......so they cannot even have the appearance that this influences the independence of their decisions. Even they must realize that.