Federal Government's Role in Enforcing Rules in Sporting Events

The press appears to be upset with Floyd Landis for defending himself and forcing USADA to waste taxpayer funds (“Landis Case Costs US Taxpayers,” March 15).

The 2006 Tour de France winner, who was stripped of his victory last year, seeks to have his title restored by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It’s the final step in a series of appeals that have cost upward of $2 million, a good portion of which has been paid for with federal funds…

But it will still be costly, and a good chunk of the cost will be footed by USADA, which gets about 70 percent of its $12 million annual budget from the federal government, and the rest from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Some newspapers, like the Akron Beacon Journal, have redistributed the aforementioned Associated Press news article only to change the title and imply that U.S. taxpayers are also paying for Floyd Landis’ defense (“Taxpayers to Pay for Landis’ Defense,” March 16).

But cycling websites were quick to point out the biases and inaccuracies in the stories and headlines. Trust But Verify discusses how truth is often a casualty of journalistic sensationalism.

Ohio.com proves that little things like “details” don’t really matter much when you’re trying to get a reaction to a headline. “Taxpayers to Pay for Landis Defense“ insinuates that we have footed the bill not only for USADA’s prosecution of the case, but also for all of Floyd Landis’ defense as well. Let’s never let the truth get in the way of “journalistic” sensationalism. Landis has enough on his plate without being stoned by angry US taxpayers.

Racejunkie finds it interesting how the media can’t get enough of the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball without nary a complaint about the colossal waste of taxpayer funds.

[N]ow there’s a brand new outrage to stick on him: he alone is sucking up your precious tax dollars that could be used to fill deserving potholes in your own neighborhood with his malicious selfish whining about “Justice this!” and “Fair play that!” Leaving aside that no-one’s been crying about using tax dollars to exonerate a pack of couch-glomming overpaid baseball players whose necks and biceps clearly increased in size from toothpicks to actual redwoods over the suspicious span of about a week…

Velo Vertomax suggests that the blame be redirected towards WADA and their failure to remedy incompetent testing procedures at so-called accredited labs which lead to astronomical costs of defending sloppy work.

There has been some discussion of the amount of money spent by USADA to defend the Floyd Landis Adverse Analytical Finding. What is always forgotten is the deplorable state of Chatenay-Malabry testing and how expensive it is to defend bad lab work. WADA could correct these problems if they trained their personnel on how to the lab work, how to keep records straight, and how to keep a strict chain-of-custody…

If USADA and the taxpayers are burdened with expensive litigation to defend the poor lab performance of LNDD then WADA should encourage the laboratories to train their personnel on how to run the tests, how to set up the equipment, how to code the data on the Lab Document Package, how to make corrections correctly, and how to maintain a credible chain of custody. Then these expensive and prolonged appeals would be prevented saving everyone money. U.S. taxpayer and athlete. Until WADA makes a valiant attempt to correct the existing problems appeals will continue since the laboratory results can not be relied upon to prove the Adverse Analytical Finding.

Of course, my basic question is why does the federal government need to have any role in enforcing the rules of sports? And why is federal funding of one particular rule (doping) the only rule that requires federal intervention? As far as I’m concerned, all federal taxpayer money spent on enforcing the rules of a sporting game is a waste.