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Sports Law Clinic director comments on Landis case

Thursday, May 24, 2007


Valpo Sports Law Clinic Director Michael Straubel today expressed the following concerns about the Floyd Landis/USADA arbitration hearing. Professor Straubel has received numerous requests for comment during the Landis hearing after emerging at last year's Winter Olympics as a voice among those concerned with the effectiveness and fairness of anti-doping efforts.

"It is important to eliminate cheating in sports and enforce anti-doping rules consistently and fairly, but the USADA v. Landis hearing is a rare public airing of the many tensions and growing pains that haunt the doping control process," said Professor Straubel. "Those tensions include a bureaucracy that needs to prove itself vs. an accused athlete's need for information to defend himself. The system is designed to be quick vs. the need to be thorough in order to be fair. It is a system based on breach of contract dispute procedures vs. claims and charges that are criminal in their seriousness."

Professor Straubel added, "However, at the heart of the Landis case are questions about the reliability of a still developing science and anti-doping enforcement using that science. Floyd Landis and his attorneys are challenging a system which presumes the science is reliable and testing is properly done, but which then limits the information available to athletes about that science and testing. This challenge has clearly shown how difficult it is to put the testers to their proofs. Perhaps the larger result of the Landis case will be a system that is more self correcting and reliable."

The Valpo Sports Law Clinic is a pro bono service of Valparaiso University School of Law. The Clinic was founded in 2005 and has represented and advised many amateur athletes and coaches in its mission to provide free legal assistance to them, based on need. The Valpo Sports Law Clinic sent a team to Turin, Italy for the 2006 Winter Olympics and is currently planning its on-site service for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

Professor Straubel has served as Director of the Valpo Sports Law Clinic since its inception. Tom Shaer is Media Relations Consultant.


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