French Anti-Doping Agency not completely shut out
While the French anti doping agency AFLD has been denied to carry out doping tests during the 2010 Tour de France, the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) announced that AFLD will get an enhanced role in the Tour testing process this year.
WADA asked the AFLD to be notified about any test it would like to conduct. WADA will evaluate such requests via an Independent Observer Team (IO team) present at the Tour de France. If the team decides further testing is warranted, the International Cycling Union (UCI) will be notified.
WADA thus wants to require the UCI to carry out certain tests, if AFLD has confidential information about possible doping cases. The test will be conducted by a UCI chaperone, with a WADA representative also in attendance.
The UCI chaperone will not know who the rider in question is until informed by the WADA representative. In addition, WADA said that “there should be no communication to any external parties from the UCI doping control officer and the UCI chaperone from the time they meet the WADA IO team representative until the mission is fully completed.” The testing itself is on a rather narrow scale. “All samples collected during these missions should be analyzed for EPO and hgH [human growth hormone].”
Especially the points about cutting off the communication from the UCI may raise some eyebrows in the Pat McQuaid-led cycling organization. WADA is well aware of it and has added the following section: “If for whatever reason(s) the above mentioned conditions are not acceptable to UCI, or are not respected during the Tour de France, WADA will grant the AFLD the permission to perform such tests itself.”
WADA rejected several of the earlier objections by the UCI, especially that there were formal issues with the request. AFLD initially did not notify the UCI, but this has been done in the mean time. The one-week period for comment has been given again upon notification by the UCI.
WADA also did not think that past trouble in the UCI-AFLD relationship should hinder such an agreement. The main benefit that WADA sees is that AFLD has access to data from the French police and customs, “which could be useful to target test riders during the Tour.”
The main reason why WADA did not allow AFLD to just carry out the test themselves is that “testing conducted by AFLD will necessarily fall under French law, which is not, to date, fully Code compliant. Having UCI perform such extra tests upon request from AFLD will ensure that results management for all tests will be conducted under UCI rules, which are Code compliant and provide for a final appeal to CAS.”
A main reason for trying to cut off the communication as much as possible is that “the unannounced component of testing is vital in ensuring target testing is successful.”