Ok. But isn’t the critical difference that in sports doping you can be found guilty in the absence of a positive test; thats what happened to Lance Armstrong and the banned EFC players.
My understanding is a different onus on proof was applied by the AFL tribunal. But that didn’t preclude the anti-doping bodies applying the worldwide standards.
No double jeopardy applies between the sports governing bodys decision and the ASADA.
Lance Armstrong teammate had a positive and rolled over. Then George Hincape and at least 2 others admitted guilt and cooperated in divulging what they knew while they were US Postal.
The US applied a standard of proof of beyond reasonable doubt to Armstrong . In three earlier CAS cases not involving positive tests CAS applied a standard of proof close to that ( and two of them involved whistleblowers).
The standard of proof applied to the E34 was exceedingly low and inconsistent with CAS jurisprudence.
The evidentiary tests were abysmal, including the ascription of ulterior motives to statements which , if benchmarked against statements commonly made in society , would not have credence as evidence. There is also the doctoring of evidence by the likes of Clothier and Haddad, which was exposed in part in the Federal Court proceedings.
Clothier got his reward as the IAAF integrity officer. Haddad, who had been involved in the AFL bringing down Dean Bailey, is still at the AFL, still in the so-called integrity area.
The crucial difference seems to be that in sports doping you can be found guilty without evidence.
And, yes, it would seem that you’re missing a few things.
In the past, the US had a history of covering up doping by the big stars, as for example Carl Lewis, when Ben Johnson copped the opprobrium and USOC “losing “ evidence. To the world, it was mostly only those dastardly communist countries that doped.
After the BALCO scandal, the US became more transparent but with Armstrong, as the face of cycling and sponsored by the US Postal Service, the cover-up continued.
The current US litigation against Armstrong for recovery of sponsorship could expose a lot more cover-ups, with Armstrong appearing to base his defence that the relevant US bodies were aware that so many US cyclists were doping, but were complicit in the cover-up.
However he did test positive and they all (US Postal) went to great lengths to avoid testing and using other types of injections to cover the doping etc.
‘I don’t recall’ that our player’s tested positive to anything, let alone avoid testing or covering up.
I do recall a couple of our players having elevated levels of TB-4, but so did about 30 players from other teams.
Regardless, what happened with Lance Armstrong/US Postal is on a completely different planet to what happened with our players and it irks me greatly that comparisons are made between the 2 cases.
Individual instead of team-based.
Governing body collusion in the doping!
It is literally the laziest, most inaccurate comparison possible.
Edit: And aside from all that, I don’t understand what point is being attempted here.
Armstrong didn’t test positive, and Essendon didn’t test positive, therefore Essendon were equally guilty?
That doesn’t make a lick of sense, even in a basic logic sense. It’s one of the most famous fallacies.
It seems to be that if there’s no positive test then players must prove their innocence.
In which case, wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwtf?
There is no reason to enter this thread unless you have done research and have some knowledge of doping and it’s history - I fully understand why are a few are a touch frustrated.
Newcomers to the site can’t be expected to have all the info that long termers have (yes, makes it sound like a prison sentence). If not for blitz over the last 5 years I probably would be relatively uninformed.
And I know many have searched far and wide. For people like me though, this place just makes it so much easier by providing the links, if not the content itself.
Sorry, might not have gone right back to check the context of your post