The French anti-doping agency apparently will take no action against Lance Armstrong as a result of hubbub a few weeks back about him taking a shower while his people confirmed the identity of an anti-doping tester. 

Apparently, the end result of this whole deal was that there were no abnormalities in the actual samples tested, hence no case for sanctions in the first place. Well, duh. That should have been the story in the first place. 

Which makes me wonder: Why in the world was there so much angst and coverage about what essentially turned out to be a non-story?

Basically, “showergate,” as Armstrong called it, was a media-created story — L’Equippe broke it — and that brings to mind a major difference between anti-doping in the U.S. and in France.

It seems that in France, a single positive A-sample — or even alleged ill-behavior in the course of giving a sample as Armstrong recently found out – gets reported in the media through leaks somewhere in the pipeline. This immediately puts the athlete on the defensive but, worse, it’s against the world anti-doping code, which has a procedure to follow in anti-doping cases.

In the U.S., you often don’t hear about a positive test until the athlete discloses it himself (Tyler Hamilton is a recent example) or until there are sanctions (Michael Lange is a recent example).

It seems officials at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency are better at keeping the lid on cases until the cases are resolved, or until the athlete discloses it himself. Isn’t this how the anti-doping rules supposed to work?

The recent Armstrong showergate story was much ado about nothing, a waste of newsprint and cyberspace, it turns out. And this, mind you, was even after his samples in the anti-doping control in question had come up negative, i.e. clean!

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