Landis challenged his case. What did that reveal about the testing process?

Question: Have you gotten any cases wrong?

Gary Wadler: The one case that everybody has tended to speculate about, and people have watched the process in operation, has been the Floyd Landers case, the cyclist, where the two different approaches for detecting testosterone abuse suggested that an abuse occurred. These two tests are totally different approaches. Both came up with the same result. He’s challenged that. And actually the challenges work up the chain of command, if you will, and went to the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the tribunal that looked at that particular case of experts concluded that there was a doping violation. And I believe he’s taking this to the Court of Arbitration for Sport which is the last stop. But it was an interesting experience because people watched how complicated this all is. And that’s probably the bottom line of what I want to say here is how complicated and sophisticated this all is. This is not just taking a pill. The science is very demanding; the adjudication process is very demanding. There’s a lot at stake here. And the only way it seems to me this was able to be dealt with is to institutionalize the whole process and that’s really how WADA was born. Whether it’s the laboratories, the collection of specimens, the handing out of sanctions, developing the list, the concept of therapeutic use exemptions, which we should talk about, there are so many different elements to this that sound bite critiques of doping really don’t do justice to the evolution of the anti-doping movement over the last eight or nine years.

Recorded on:04/25/2008