Tyler Hamilton's issues

No one likes to see a nice guy - a hometown hero - take a fall. www.rscyle.com is based in Boulder, CO - where Tyler had his infamous collegiate cycling carrier and set numerous local records - We Want To Believe!!
We will probably never know the truth about what happened, on one hand you have a deep desire to believe Tyler because of his background - and on the other hand you have scientific tests from the world governing body of cycling, who's job is to promote and grow cycling in an ethical way.

Here's the story - let us know what you think!! Should Tyler have gotten his appeal?

CAS rejects Hamilton appeal

By Charles Pelkey
Special to VeloNews

This report filed February 11, 2006

A three-member arbitration panel from the International Court of Arbitration for Sport has unanimously rejected the appeal of American Tyler Hamilton, upholding his two-year suspension for a blood doping violation at the 2004 Vuelta a España.

Hamilton was found guilty of blood doping after samples submitted after this Vuelta time trial on September 11, 2004 indicated the presence of another person's blood.

photo: AFP (file photo)

The three arbitrators also ruled that Hamilton's two-year ban should have been effective from the date of his initial suspension (September 23, 2004) rather than on the date a North American hearing panel confirmed his penalty (April 17, 2005). That change may mean that Hamilton could return to the top level of the sport as early as this fall, just two days before the world road championships.

Hamilton quickly issued a statement maintaining his innocence and expressing disappointment that the three-member panel chose to reject, his challenge of what had been a new application of an established testing technique.

"Based on my devastating personal experience over the last year and a half, I am committed to fighting for reform within the anti-doping movement," Hamilton said." I do support the anti-doping mission and (the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency), however the current system has failed an innocent athlete and needs to change."

The CAS panel, however, rejected Hamilton's appeal, which was largely based on a challenge of the veracity of the test. The three-member panel unanimously ruled that "USADA has met its burden of proof by demonstrating that the HBT test conducted by the Lausanne Laboratory was in accordance with the scientific community's practice and procedures."

Following his time trial stage win at the 2004 Vuelta, Hamilton submitted a blood sample that later showed signs of a foreign blood population, indicating that the former Phonak rider had injected red blood cells from a donor in order to increase his own red-blood-cell count and boost his endurance.

The test, which employs a 30-year-old medical technology often used in hospitals to separate sub-groups in common blood types, was first applied to the doping question as part of an Australian study published in the August 2002 edition of the journal Haematologica.

The method - flow cytometry - relies on the fact that the surfaces of individuals' red blood cells have a distinct set of antigen receptors. Blood samples are exposed to a specific set of die-soaked antigens and then individual cells are exposed to a laser beam. The resulting fluorescent patterns are studied for differences. The method has long been used by hospitals to "sub-type" blood, but the method had been applied to doping tests only since the 2004 Olympics.

In September of 2004, Olympic officials originally reported that Hamilton had submitted a "suspicious" sample at the 2004 Games in Athens, after he had won the gold medal in the individual time trial.

An established pattern?
Further revelations, however, suggest that Hamilton's blood produced similarly aberrant results from samples taken in April and June of 2004. Those samples showed "strong signs of possible manipulation," and resulted in a June 10 warning letter to Hamilton from the UCI, informing him that he would be "closely monitored," throughout the 2004 season.

According to CAS documents, the samples had already shown indications of mixed red blood cell populations, but at the time there was no formally recognized test for so-called "homologous blood doping." That test was not deployed until the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

It was in Athens, after Hamilton won the gold medal for the individual time trial, that he apparently again submitted a blood sample that reviewers later said showed signs of a mixed population of cells. Although the test was now certified, the result of Hamilton's test was not confirmed after lab technicians froze the B-sample, destroying the red-blood cells and preventing further testing.

IOC officials soon announced that they were dropping the case and that Hamilton could keep his medal. The Russian Olympic Committee has since filed an appeal seeking to overturn that decision, strip Hamilton of the gold and award it to silver medalist Viatcheslav Ekimov.

Hamilton did not learn of the results of the Athens test until after he had submitted another sample at the Vuelta. IOC, UCI and World Anti-Doping Agency officials have since conceded that he had probably been targeted for additional testing after the B-sample debacle in Athens.

Hamilton withdrew from the Vuelta on September 16 and was suspended from competition on the 23rd of that month.

Hamilton was issued a two-year suspension, which then triggered a lengthy appeal process. Hamilton's attorneys argued that there could have been reasons, other than blood doping, for the positive flow cytometry result, including remnant DNA from a twin sibling that never developed in his mother's womb, a relatively rare phenomenon known as a "chimera."

Hamilton's initial appeal was rejected in a split decision by a three-member panel from the American Arbitration Association last April. While the majority of that panel rejected Hamilton's challenges to the veracity of the test, arbiter Christopher Campbell said that USADA and others defending the procedure had failed to present a compelling case. Campbell pointed to what he said was a failure on the part of WADA to accurately document the actual risk of false positives in the test developed by scientists in Australia.

Campbell argued that while WADA could have relied on a very objective and verifiable set of standards to detect such false readings, the agency took an "I know it when I see it" approach to quality control.

Furthermore, Campbell said that the testing procedures failed to take into account other factors that could have influenced the outcome of a flow cytometry examination of a population of red blood cells, including bone marrow transplant and recent pregnancies, obviously neither of which was raised as a defense in the Hamilton case.

Another round of appeals... and that disappearing twin
Buoyed by that vigorous dissent, Hamilton attorney Howard Jacobs moved the case to CAS, the sporting world's highest court of appeal.
But following a lengthy set of hearings that concluded this January, the CAS Panel unanimously found that Hamilton had committed a doping violation and that USADA had met the burden of proof.

The three-member panel, composed of two Americans and an Australian, noted that testimony from expert witnesses, including flow cytometry specialist, Dr. Bruce Davis of the Maine Medical Center Research Institute, who is also the Chairman of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Area Committee in Hematology. Davis told the panel that "without any equivocation . . . the blood sample from Tyler Hamilton on September 11, 2004 contained a mixed population . . . indicat[ing] a previous homologous blood transfusion."

The panel rejected Hamilton's explanations for the positive test result including the disappearing twin, noting that Hamilton had declined to undergo follow-up testing after an initial DNA assessment of one of his earlier blood samples apparently refuted his claim of chimerism.

"During the course of the hearing, DNA testing was carried out by Dr. Busch, which indicated that (Hamilton) was not a chimera... while (Hamilton) submitted a reply concerning this testing (he) did not participate in (additional)testing, as he was invited to do," the panel's decision noted.

The panel said that while Hamilton and his legal team had raised "general criticisms" of the methods employed, the complaints were "not backed up by facts."

"The Panel considered each of the excuses and found each to be completely without merit," Terry Madden, CEO of USADA, said in a press release issued Saturday. "It is sad that Mr. Hamilton resorted to conspiracy theories rather than just accept the consequences of his doping."

Madden added, "the development and implementation of this test and the confirmation of its validity would not have been possible without the dedication and efforts of the scientific community and the world anti-doping movement."

But Hamilton suggested that the entire process - from test approval all the way to the hearing process - was rife with conflicts of interest.

"Out of respect to fairness and the rights of all athletes, there should be clear separation between the agencies that develop new tests and those that adjudicate anti-doping cases," he wrote Saturday. "Credible, independent experts, not those who funded or developed the original methodology, should be charged with properly validating new tests.

"I don't believe any athlete should be subjected to a flawed test or charged with a doping violation through the use of a method that is not fully validated or generates fluctuating results. I will also continue to support the formation of unions to help protect the rights of athletes. My goal is to keep other athletes from experiencing the enormous pain and horrendous toll of being wrongly accused."

End in sight?
Hamilton did achieve a minor victory in the CAS appeal in that the panel determined that the two-year suspension handed down by the American Arbitration Association/North American Court of Arbitration for Sport (AAA/CAS) was inappropriately started on the date of the decision - April 17, 2005 - instead of the date of the original infraction - September 11, 2004.

That means that Hamilton will be eligible to compete again later this year. Strict anti-doping provisions in the charter of the new UCI ProTour require that a rider be banned from participating at that top level of the sport for a period twice that of any suspension handed out by a rider's national federation.

Under the original suspension, Hamilton would not have been eligible to ride for a ProTour team until April of 2008. Now that the suspension date has been shifted, he might be eligible to ride at that level after September 22 of this year, coincidentally just two days before the start of this year's world road race championship.