The anti-doping dopes in France failed once again Sunday at the Paris-Tours, but unlike the Floyd Landis case, this failure turned out to be in the athletes’ favor.

Italian Alessandro Petacchi, who is at the center of a doping controversy not of the French’s making, won the race in a sprint finish, but in a departure from anti-doping protocol, he did not have to submit to a doping test after the race. The reason: The anti-doping doctor wasn’t on hand to administer the test!

No doctor equals no questionable lab practices  equals no  false-positives squals no media leaks equals no ruined careers equals no arbitrations equals no appeals.  

The Inspector Clouseau-esque doctor arrived 15 minutes after the race ended, which is about 2 hours later than he should have, according to cyclingnews. The protocol requires the anti-doping folks to usher the winner and the randomly selected victims … er, cyclists to the anti-doping controls immediately following the race.

Now, this reporter is all for clean racing and applauds the anti-doping crusade of American team Slipstream-Chipotle as well as the anti-doping programs of CSC and T-Mobile (and hopefully Astana, which looks to be adopting the CSC program), but something must be done to reform the anti-doping system and hold it to a high standard of accountability as suggested in the Landis arbitration case.

Also, teams such as Slipstream, CSC and T-Mobile are smart to have  independent test programs because the teams will have their own independent evidence if one of their riders is Richard Kimbled.

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