Unfortunately, 15 National Championships in a row seemed too good to be true and it wasn’t true. It’s hard to feel bad for her given the post about Betsema above.
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Lest we forget that professional sport is a profession, a business. Many people across every profession/business lie, cheat, steal, etc. Probs best not to idolise where money is involved.
Unless you want to end up heartbroken when Garry (Garry’s Deli p/b Garry) gets busted for fat fingering the scale.
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Question
Test 1 was negative
Test 2 positive
What’s the difference in the two tests?
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My understanding is that the re-test, which was triggered due to irregularities in her bio-passport, was a different and more detailed testing procedure. Someone speculated that it was carbon radio isotope testing, but I don’t know if that is true (or even what it means 
)
But her bio passport irregularities caused them to look harder / deeper at her test results.
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These comments from VeloNews’ Instagram post blow me away. In a sport with such a well documented drug problem, the number of people that are saying they still support her regardless are absolutely shocking to me. This kind of support is what perpetuates a cheating culture.
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The thing that always comes to my mind is whether many riders dope and simply get away with it or whether this is a one off case. Did she dope for a decade and not get caught?
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Compton and Houlihan both got 4 year bans. When an athlete gets a 4 year ban, doesn’t that usually mean that it was a pretty convincing case?
I’m far from an expert, but I think a 4 year ban is pretty much the default, then you can get it lessoned by defending yourself and showing extenuating circumstances. The generous reading is she was retiring anyway so didn’t want to go to the expense of chasing that option.
She may have started doping to mitigate the decline of age, but I think it’s reasonable to assume she’s had the same win at all cost mindset for a long time 
.
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Short primer on Carbon isotopes: basically carbon occurring in the wild doesn’t have a single atomic composition - there are 22 atomic compositions found. But the ratio of these isotopes in a sample can be used to determine age (carbon dating due to the fact that these different isotopes have varying half life’s / decay rates), or in this case to determine the presence of a foreign substance as the ratio of carbon isotopes differed.
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Derek gave a nice primer on the isotope testing method here:
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This is kinda what the well funded athletes do.
FYI you should ‘always’ keep a sample and the label from the supplements etc.
When a positive test is found they get lawyers buy up every tub of the product with the same batch code and send it to a lab for analysis to show contamination. The reason why that doesn’t happen so often is its an excuse.
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She got caught. As a pro athlete she is responsible for everything she puts in her body just like amateurs are.
Unfortunately people accept no accountability. It’s easy to deny or pin the blame on something else.
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I forget if this archer said he saved his meds before this happened to him or not. Either way he does now and preaches others to as well. My next question would be how long to do so? Minimum 5 months after reading about Katie’s re-test, so a couple years? A decade? Entire career?
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If you read through this it gives some discussion around that approach - when it can work, when it doesn’t.
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A similar thing happened to Tommy Danielson and he just disappeared into the air after getting caught. Its like atomic isotope weight that can detect normal amounts (i.e. microdosing) that came via unnatural means.
I read through a few articles on the test.
Whats weird is the small amount from food would throw off the biological passport so much it would cause them to run the 2nd test.
And why dont they just run the 2nd test off the rip
You are assuming it was food that threw off the bio-passport levels.
Hoofbeats usually = Horses, not zebras.
What is amazing to me is how these tests only catch people who “accidently” ingested something bad, but never catches people who actually dope. Weird, right?
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Lab capacity & $$ I’d bet.
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Generally it’s because the more detailed tests are more expensive and more labor intensive. USADA or whoever just doesn’t have the budget to be doing the super deep tests on every sample for every athlete.
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Generally the B sample is only ever used if either the A sample comes back positive and it’s then tested at a different lab just to make sure the original lab didn’t get it wrong OR something comes to light in the future that indicates the sample needs testing. If you tested both at the same time you wouldn’t be able to go back and test again.
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