Re: salmonella chocolate - I thought one man's trash was another man's treasure?

man, the vatikan sucked. you couldn't walk 2 steps without some mystery woman putting coke in your mouth, heroin in your eye, etc etc.. what a dive.

Fair enough, ramanan. I put "skank" in quotation marks.

I appreciate all your comments, and I understand the reaction. I'd like to give a bit of a different perspective, and hope that you all at least consider it.

The accounting of the situation that I provided to the doping authorities was never given to them in the spirit of trying to avoid any responsibility. It was entirely offered to explain the presence of the substance in my body, and please believe me that if I had invented the story it would have been entirely more plausible. We knew going in that the story was unbelievable, but it's what happened, and changing it or altering it to make it more digestible was never something that we considered.

Telling them the truth about what happened was the worst strategic mistake that I could have made, but to be anything less than upfront and honest with them was not an option for me. Had I denied ever ingesting the substance, and just claimed departures from the rules, I would have had a better chance of getting off on a technicality. Alternatively I could have claimed that someone who used cocaine left a catheter in my room and I used it instead of my own - there are about a million other stories that I could have invented that would have served me better in this case.

The most frustrating thing is that the system sets athletes up for this - the messaging has been diligent and unrelenting that athletes are always guilty, and always lie.

To put this in context, women get constant warnings from law enforcement to not leave their drinks unattended - we don't call bullshit on them when they date rapes happen. These kinds of things happen regularily, but when they happen to athletes, we're never believed. The CCES has turned this into a "bizarre story", but it's really not.

The story boils down to this: I was in a bar, sitting next to a woman who was on cocaine - I had been talking to her, and at some point, I stopped being interested in doing that. I told her that I was really tired, and didn't want to talk to her any more. She got pretty upset about that, and in her head, I think she thought that she would be helping me by giving me cocaine (I would no longer be tired). In the drug culture, people share cocaine all the time, and taking cocaine orally is quite common in public (I've learned), because all that needs to happen is for the substance to get to a mucous membrane, and taking it orally is a much less obvious way to do it. She turned to me, and put her hands up near my face - I had no idea what she was going to do, and she had been quite "touchy feely" up to that point, so I really didn't see it coming. She put her fingers in my mouth, and that's how it happened.

There were two witnesses - a woman who works for the Crown Attorney of Ontario, and the photo editor for McLeans magazine - they are credible witnesses who are not my friends, and their testimony was unimpeached.

The tests actually prove that the substance was not in my system at the time of the test, and indicate contamination as the likely cause. They found less than 3 ng - as an aside, even an incarcerated federal inmate in the Corrections system needs to have 300ng to test positive (because the Charter applies to them, and the Fed. Human Rights Commission requires thresholds for all substances, but athletes somehow don't get those same benefits).

The Arbitrator found as fact that:
My testimony was "unshaken" through cross-examination.
The scientific evidence was unequivocal that the substance was not in my system at the time of the test.
This is not a case of cheating.
This is not a case of attempted performance enhancing.
The substance WAS NOT in my system at the time of the test.
From the decision:

Para. 118: “The scientific evidence is unequivocal that cocaine ingested more than six days before the sample was taken could not have remained in the Athlete’s system to be present in the urine sample. Therefore the AAF must either be as a result of the use of the Vatikan Catheter or an ingestion of cocaine later than 21 May 2006”.
Para. 116: “I must conclude that the credibility as to what is being said by the Athlete remains unshaken through cross-examination”. (This includes testimony that I had not ingested cocaine at any other time in my life)
Para. 119: “The Athlete’s evidence if accepted would mean that the Prohibited Substance was not present in his bodily fluids during the Competition…”
The Arbitrator contradicts himself in these paragraphs, in order to find that the Charter does not apply:
Para. 145: “Therefore, where fair and equitable, the Doping Tribunal may consider the Charter or any other relevant legislation, including human rights legislation in rendering its decision. It is not relevant whether the Doping Tribunal has the authority f the provincial or federal government to apply the law, as this power is being recognized in the context of a private arbitration proceeding by the rules governing its procedures.”
Para. 164: “…arbitrators appointed under the SDRCC are not “courts of competent jurisdiction” and as such, I have no jurisdiction to grant the s. 24 remedy being sought by the Athlete.
How does the Tribunal have the ability to consider the Charter, but no jurisdiction to grant a s. 24 remedy?
This is where the Human Rights Code issue comes into play:
Para 166: “Annex 6B of the CADP Rules is intended to ensure that disabled athletes have no greater burden for securing the integrity of doping control test results than other athletes and is consistent with the human rights legislation of Ontario. Athletes who use a catheter have a choice to use their own or request one from the DCO. In choosing to use their own catheter they take on responsibilities that those who choose to rely upon the DCO do not.”
This is absolutely and patently untrue, and the Arbitrator knows it. The CCES was crystal clear that it does not provide catheters to athletes, nor does it intend to do so in the future. The DCO does not carry catheters, and when they are asked to provide them, the message is that they DO NOT DO SO. The athletes are not given a choice, because if they ask for a catheter, they are told that the cces does not provide them.

Athletes who catheterize HAVE NO CHOICE but to provide their own. The CCES and the Arbitrator know this - the evidence presented at the hearing was uncontroverted in this regard.

The CCES knows that they must offer to provide catheters to be in compliance with the Ontario Human Rights Code, and they know that they do not offer to provide catheter.

I would turn your request around on them. The CCES should also come clean if they know they are violating human rights legislation. They know that the don't offer catheters, and they know that the Arbitrator made an error. It takes a big organization to admit that they made a mistake, but they are the Can. Center for ETHICS in Sport after all.

Gary, Bob, this is an enormous issue. The CCES has an entire annex (6B) to the CADP that they are ignoring. They have a duty to provide a contamination free testing protocol to ALL athletes, and they are shirking their responsibilities to atheltes with a disability. Had I been provided with a sterile catheter, we would not be here today. The substance was not in my body during the competition. It was in my catheter.

To convict me, the cces had to violate the principles of the Charter, and they had to break their own rules. The people who uphold the rules should not be allowed to break their own rules in order to secure convictions, nor should they be allowed to not guarantee a contamination free testing protocol for athletes with disabilities.

If this was a substance that was prohibited at all times, I would be in an entirely different moral boat, but the substance is not prohibited out of competition. At the time of ingestion, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, I did not violate any of the WADA rules.

The WADA code says:

“An athlete’s out-of-competition use of a prohibited substance that is not prohibited out-of-competition would not constitute an anti-doping rule violation” (see paragraph 111 of Decision, WADA code 2.2, comment).

Again, the most important point is that the substance was not in my system during the competition - it was in my catheter.

If I was guilty, I would cop to it. I'm not guilty of anything except using a contaminated piece of equipment

Wow Jeff, thanks for clearing that up. You've been wronged, I hope everything turns out okay for you.

LOL! Stolen tainted chocolate.