I’m not following this back and forth too closely, but now that I read your reply with the citation of the relevant rules the conclusion I have:
- It might be the case that she is at fault and can’t claim no fault or negligence. She should have reasonably know and should have exercised more caution with regard to the substances her sexual partner was using. Can it be demonstrated that she had been previously informed that sexual activity with a doping partner can lead to a positive test? If so, did she clear this with her partner? Was that included in her rebuttal evidence?
- Major event - by your citation of the definition, I put the T100 as a major event, full stop. The entire series is a chain of major events that compensates her based on her continued participation.
The first point I made about fault is debatable by reasonable people. The second point about major events is only debatable if you’re a lawyer who doesn’t have a leg to stand on so you argue everything everywhere at once and hope something sticks.
The ‘Event’ bit is only relevant to TSB’s fascination with ‘expedited hearing’. You may consider a T100 race as a “major event” but examples are given (“(e.g., the Olympic Games, World Championships of an International Federation, or Pan American Games).”). One of many races in a season long tour doesn’t fit.
I agree that Simmonds may be judged at fault as you described.
I suggest the answers to your Qs can be deduced from the detail she shared on 26th February:
" it was discovered that, unknown to me, my longtime partner had been ingesting ligandrol to help improve his own personal physique around the time of the positive test.
“At the instruction of my legal team, my partner and I immediately submitted to a hair sample analysis [which] confirmed [that] my partner had done so over the period in question (his hair sample came back positive).”
On the hair sampling, the analysis can show the concentrations of x, y and/or z reaching back from (not less than) 40 to 90+ days. Partner’s hair sample is ‘glowing’ for a period, the length of which is not known, save that that period includes the first half of December. This, together with the science on bodily fluid transfer pathway, demonstrates he could have been the source (which Simmonds needs as a condition of her evidence towards ‘No Fault or Negligence’).
So you don’t seem to acknowledge that it really isn’t up to WADA to determine what isn’t major outside of National selection activities.
Ironman is a private corporation and they determine what is and what is not significant. Hence she isn’t racing.
T100 like Ironman is sanctioned as a race competition by the International Triathlon Union (dba World Triathlon). However, T100 remains a private competition and they determine what is an what is not significant. They have clearly chosen (and Ironman) that all of their races are significant competition. Otherwise she’d be racing…how do I know this? Unfortunately I’ve dealt with a case where no body involved in the field sport I was working in wanted to say the league of competition was ‘significant’ because the people generally responsible for the test (National and World Federation) were also arguing whose test it was. Individual was later suspended but got to complete that season.
Subsequently…there have been more world federation tests in that sport and those other player was immediately removed from competition.
And again, anti-doping authorities do not place much provenance in hair samples.