Sorry Saga - Why do we fight?

Little an inaugural member of the BIG boys club, the others are wannabes

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Your sauces ever mention the Finnis name, formerly AFLPA CEO during the Saga , currently the Saints CEO ( well nominally)?

Could someone on here tell whether we could expect the truth to come out one day? Will we see James, Jobe or others do a tell all?

I’d say they’re not the ones with the all to tell.

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Although the case was lost, so much truth in the evidence documented on line by the Federal Court in Hird v ASADA CEO

  • and what ASADA is refusing under FOI
    - like the evidence submitted to the ADRVP by McDevitt

We got a redacted one via Sandor Earl (lost ) appeal to AAT on TB4
- but funnily enough, Earl not convicted on TB4
- one of the the NRL rulings that ASADA did not take to WADA ( the other one the Cronulla suspension)

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Make you right.
Would love to see someone finds their conscience troubling them and turn whistle blower.

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After that US athlete got suspended for out of competition cannabis +ve test, banned under the WADA substances of abuse category , she got a discount for evidence that it was not taken for performance enhancement.
WADA rules do not require WADA to prove performance enhancing, or indeed that it meets two of the three WADA legal criteria for listing - health, performance enhancing or against the sprit of sport.
Given that cannabis is legal in parts of the US, a US Congressional Committee on human rights and civil liberties wrote to the WADA head asking why it was WADA listed.
The WADA response of 10 July ( should be on WADA site) waffle waffle, referred to the procedures for listing, including all that bevy of independent scientific experts, the Executive Committee, references to US nationals, including USADA role.
Seems the true story is that it was listed at US political insistence in the Clinton era.
Waiting for a relevant Australian Parliamentary Committee to ask WADA why TB4 got specifically listed as banned after E34 got suspended when it was not listed

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You are correct it was American pressure that lead to cannabis being placed on the WADA prohibited list - Typical of a US Congressional Committee going off half-cocked without doing relevant research - Yet these committees still try to interfere in other countries internal matters

It is inscribed in the WADA equivalent of a Constitution that a substance must meet 2 of 3 criteria for listing.
I know that the burden of proof is constructed in a way that WADA does not have the burden of proof in a case to demonstrate that it has met its legal obligation to only list a substance meeting two of the three criteria.
WADA has refused to advise the criteria for TB4 being banned.
It is the very question that the US Committee should have put to WADA in regard to cannabis.
But why can’t WADA be subject to a wider legal challenge, not involving an athlete using a substance, that it has acted outside its own legal powers in listing a substance?
Further, is there any scope for a legal challenge to the AFL for incorporating WADA rules which may have been adopted inconsistent with its own Constitutional competence…?

I would guess there is legal scope but no-one wants to pay the mega-dollars needed to run the case.The AFL has deeper pockets and more influence than anyone.

A case against ASADA would be more likely to succeed. They are model litigants, after all.

I would would have to dig it out but around 2016 Director General of WADA, Olivier Niggli when questioned about the integrity of the PL responded by saying that the WADA List Expert Group met every year… and we never disclose the evidence or rationale for the addition of a substance to the PL because if we did there would be legal challenges by athletes.

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The Director General of WADA Olivier Niggli explained, back in 2016, that WADA was simply not accountable to any-one:

“It’s not a reasonable request because if they were reading the code they would know what is on the List”, he said. “That’s specifically the way that the Code’s wording has been put so that we would not have to justify why a substance is on the list. We have experts who look at it, they have three criteria. It has to meet two of the three and we never disclose nor discuss the specifics of a substance because otherwise, every time you have a positive case, there would be a challenge .” [emphasis added}

https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/interview-niggli-defends-wadas-actions-regarding-meldonium/

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Great find @19thman - if only EFC had read that list from their future. And what a defence of the list- if we told you why then you would challenge it!

Actually, up_up it was bomber 5au who put me on to it a few years back

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WADA has immunity from prosecution in Quebec or Montreal, but IIRC , Sakho got a big payout ( perhaps under French law)

Can’t find a thread for Hal Hunter so lobbing this here.

Seriously, someone needs to put a bomb under WADA/CAS and start again.

Still waiting for justice for our 34 players and coaches.

A doping case that condemned six Australian Olympians to medal loss has been dropped, triggering landmark change to world sport drug rules.

The International Olympic Committee’s withdrawal from Court of Arbitration for Sport proceedings exonerates dual Australian Olympian Brenton Rickard.

The watershed “Rickard Rule” precedent will affect athletes around the world, prompting profound rewriting of strict liability laws.

Rickard, a world champion breaststroker and retired national swim team leader has told The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald he feels “fully vindicated of any wrongdoing”.

Rickard’s bombshell positive to a banned diuretic and masking agent Furosemide – revealed eight years after he medalled in a relay at the 2012 Summer Olympics – had threatened to stain Australian Olympic history irrevocably. Five Aussie super fish, including James “The Missile” Magnussen were poised to be fall guys.

Anti-doping experts gave Rickard next to no hope of success when he took his case to world sport’s highest authority – the CAS – in November 2020 at his own expense.

“This case has taken a huge toll on my life over the past 16 months,” Rickard told The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald after a watershed win. “It has impacted me emotionally, professionally, financially, reputationally and, in general, affected my mental health.”

Now 37, Rickard, a former president of the Australian Swimmers’ Association, has suffered depression through the protracted ordeal. His move towards a high-performance sport role became untenable when his life was upended late last year.

Immediate ripple effects from Rickard’s victory at the CAS include the formal reinstatement of Australia’s clean Olympic medal record.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has now enshrined new “minimum reporting level” rules for select banned diuretics. The Age and the Herald can reveal new protocols will relate to specific diuretics that are known contaminants of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

Rickard’s retroactive screening of a doping sample he provided at the London Games revealed traces of Furosemide. Rickard’s legal team argued the masking agent was in an “exceedingly small concentration” and said “over-the-counter medications” Rickard took in the days before his Olympics drugs test must have contained the banned diuretic.

WADA’s blanket strict liability rules had no flexibility. But Rickard’s fight will trigger a rewriting of these rules.

Rickard’s lawyer Rebekah Giles, from reputational risk law firm Company Giles – which has acted for Brittany Higgins, Christine Holgate and Christian Porter in the past year – told The Age and the Herald : “Brenton was a sitting duck. [He] was faced with impossible task of proving contamination some eight years later. He could not do that in 2020 and as it turns out he could not have done that in 2012 either.

“The technical capabilities of the anti-doping authorities far surpassed those of the pharmaceutical companies who screen for contaminants or independent laboratories who conduct batch testing.”

Giles said Rickard was “embarrassed, ridiculed and deeply impacted” through the case. She added that the outcome “has come 16 months too late for Brenton, who has suffered greatly”.

Rickard was part of the men’s 4x100-metre medley team that won bronze at the 2012 Olympics. His positive test eight years after the Games rocked the Australian Olympic community when it was revealed six months ago.

Australia has never lost an Olympic medal through a drugs case. When Rickard’s positive became public he told his Australian teammates he was living his “worst nightmare”.

In a shattering fallout the entire Australian 2012 Olympics 4x100-metre men’s medley relay team – Christian Sprenger, Hayden Stoeckel, Matt Targett, Tommaso D’Orsogna, Magnussen and Rickard – were to lose their medals just before WADA’s statute of limitations was to expire for the 2012 Games.

Rickard only swam in the heat of the medley at the London Olympics but disqualification and anti-doping rules in swimming do not isolate individuals; they skittle entire relay teams.

Rickard said: “I am all for strict punishments for drug cheats, but not all cases are clear-cut and the burden of proof on an athlete can be near enough to impossible, such as was my case in attempting to prove the source of contamination on a re-test eight years after the initial test.

“While the outcome that finally clears my name is the best I could have hoped for, this case has taken a huge toll on my life over the past 16 months.”

Of the profound change to WADA’s strict liability rules Rickard added: “Some of the fundamental principles that the anti-doping system were built upon, most notably strict liability, have not been amended in line with the advancements in testing procedures and whereabouts requirements.

“My case clearly demonstrates why absolutes are dangerous and how rigid rules can operate unfairly against an athlete with potentially devastating consequence.

“The system was very close to stripping six Australians of an Olympic medal without acknowledging the incontrovertible science regarding contamination of medications and supplements. I hope no one ever has to endure this ordeal. I’m grateful it is finally over.”

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Lets hope J34 keep pursuing their case.
Any updates on whats happening there?

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Retire this thread. No send off game please.

Mute this thread. No more pointless inane snark please.

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