How is Bertscase sounds? With 1 Bertscase being slightly ridicules, just enough to rise an eyebrows. And 10 Bertscases being so ridicules, to cause uncontrollable laughter. :)

which I believe is 10 Bertscases from now…according to holms…

And now we know – airtight against a UCI/WADA appeal.

all the Contador defense is built on another piece of speculative evidence, that the clen originated from some apparently contaminated piece of mystery meat who ended up on his plate in some peculiar roundabout way.

if you didn’t have a blood transfusion nor knowingly ever ingest clenbuterol, and you had a lot of money for lawyers, and you were about to be banned from racing, would you just decide to lie down and accept the rules because those are the rules?

A second point is that he is playing by the rules. He has the right to hire lawyers and contest these results. And them’s the rules.

“Strict liability” gets him in trouble (and I would add rightly so)
To excape or reduce any sanction under that stict liability “he first needs to establish how the prohibited substance entered his system” according to a balance of probability test. “Prove” in a way is a bad way to use, as there is none on any side. As such the Tribunal is asked to make a finding on fact on the issue as follows:

In view of these provisions, it is the Panel’s understanding that, in case it is offered several alternative explanations for the ingestion of the prohibited substance, but it is satisfied that one of them is more likely than not to have occurred, the Player has met the required standard of proof regarding the means of ingestion of the prohibited substance. In that case, it remains irrelevant that there may also be other possibilities of ingestion, as long as they are considered by the Panel to be less likely to have occurred. In other words, for the Panel to be satisfied that a means of ingestion is demonstrated on a balance of probability simply means, in percentage terms, that it is satisfied that there is a 51% chance of it having occurred. The Player thus only needs to show that one specific way of ingestion is marginally more likely than not to have occurred. (Gasquet para 5.9 p22)

You cannot simply state “I didn’t take it” or posit it must have been the meat (see Onyia para 87, p19) Hence all the gubbins on contamination, animal testing stats, blood passport analysis, plasticizers etc and the mountains of testimony and evidence the panel will wade through

It is an uphill challenge for Contador, an unlikely but achievable target. If he can convince three members of a CAS panel to decide that the beef defence “is more likely than not” to have occurred then he will have “established” how it came into his system. That will deemed to be be “proof”.

It’s not about money (although that does undoubtedly help pay for all the time and effort being put into his defence), or Baysian inference, or biased panel members – it all turns on a seemingly simple question. Contador says it was the beef, is his explanation that it was thus so convincing to the panel that it outweighs the other possible explanations? If the panel says yes or no to this, they will explain in detail why.

(The Gasquet case is the nearest recent comparison and well worth a read. It shows an equally unlikely proposition – cocaine absorption from a kiss – and details the evidence submitted and why the panel chose to ignore all other possible reasons for it being there and accept the tennis players assertion)

I hope we never have to hear the phrase “2011 Giro d’Italia champion Michele Scarponi”