In the latest update of the World Anti-Doping Code, an 84-page document released Monday, the World Anti-Doping Agency has proposed increasing the ban for a first-time doping offender to four years from two years if there are “aggravating circumstances.”

According to the code, which still must be approved,  ”aggravating circumstances” include: an athlete committing a doping violation as part of a  conspiracy or  scheme; an athlete using or possessing  multiple banned substances; an athlete who would benefit from the use of  performance-enhancing drugs for more than two years.

The code also includes  assumed positives  for athletes who miss three doping tests, which would have saved us from Michael Rasmussen flapping his chicken arms  while wearing yellow this year at the Tour de France.  His team’s sponsor, Rabobank, fired him less than a week  before he would have worn yellow in Paris because  team officials said he  had lied to them  about where he was while missing doping tests. Under the new code for missed tests, WADA would have  bounced him long before Rabobank had to, before he would have turned a pedal in anger at the TdF.

The code also reduces the penalties if athletes fess up before a positive test or help nab other doping violators.

This is all well and good, anything to clean up the sport. But  after the Landis debacle, shouldn’t WADA do something about getting the labs, primarily the French  Laboratoire National de Dépistage et du Dopage, to actually conform to the testing protocol and to actually follow WADA’s rules?

Remember, the French lab  messed up Landis’ A-sample so badly that the positive result  was  tossed out and the lab was skewered in both the majority and minority decisions of Landis’ arbitration case.

If athletes might be banned for as many as four years, WADA needs to not only insist on the highest standards of conduct and accountability  for the labs that can forever label an athlete as a drug-cheat but WADA also needs to establish  a disciplinary code for labs that fail.

If a  lab  fails to live up to the standard, it should be removed as a WADA approved lab until it can prove before a court of arbitration that its work is up to snuff.

In other news Monday, the Tour de France awarded 2006 TdF runner up Oscar Pereiro the yellow jersey from 2006, even though Landis’s case has not reached its final disposition. If Landis were to win on appeaal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports,  what happens then? Would the TdF make Pereiro give the jersey back?

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