Hold the Mayo - he's cleared now... maybe

One moment you are outed as dirty and the next your B sample says otherwise. What was that about innocent until proven guilty? How do we as a community deal with these sorts of catastrophic confusions? In this example Mayo has been through personal and public hell because of one sample that painted him black, but unlike many recent others his 2nd sample has vindicated his claims of innocence. Or does it? It seems to be another case of too many cooks, as the Spanish federation says one thing and the UCI another. Meanwhile the rider - the person at the centre of it all - is powerless and (rightly or wrongly) hung out to dry. Is our approach wrong? It seems logical and professional to wait until the B sample comes back, but the current approach instead is to play it safe from a publicity angle and spill the beans early. Thus we pull riders from the peleton 'just in case', and often a rider gets burned in the process. It doesn't look good for the sport's administration and ethically it smells bad, too. Where's our humanity in this process?

Here's the report in CN: Mayo cleared after B sample comes back negative Iban Mayo was informed by the Spanish Cycling Federation on Monday that the testing of his B sample from the Tour de France positive test on July 24 has come back negative. The Saunier Duval - Prodir rider was originally declared positive for the blood booster EPO from a sample taken on the Tour's second rest day, but has now been cleared for a return to racing. According to AFP, the federation confirmed that there had been a mistake in the testing of Mayo's A sample, which was carried out at the Châtenay-Malabry anti-doping laboratory in Paris. The B sample was tested by a separate laboratory in the Belgian city of Gent, and was confirmed by another test done in Australia.

And here's the followup a few days later...The UCI said on Tuesday that it does not consider Iban Mayo's doping case to be fully closed and took issue with the Spanish Cycling Federation's announcement that Mayo's B sample had tested negative for EPO. "It wasn't a negative B sample it was an inconclusive B sample," Anne Gripper, UCI anti-doping manager told AP. "The case for us is still very open, we have not gotten a final resolution on the B sample. It needs to be analysed in the Paris laboratory."