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NR: You’re not the first to suggest there’s a bit of vigilantism on the side of the anti-doping agencies, all in the name of protecting clean athletes.

FL: Honestly, in my heart, I don’t believe they are trying to convict innocent athletes. I don’t think they have the wrong intentions. But when you look at it in a black and white context, the way they are doing things, no one could know. How could you know if they have the right intentions or not? What are they trying to do?

Let’s just look at it apart from the rules, and apart from everything else. They are trying to prevent people from cheating to win races. That’s it, that’s all they are doing. If a guy like Scott Moninger races for 18 f--king years, and he’s tested hundreds of times, and one time it happens that he takes a supplement by accident, and it’s clear and demonstrable, and in fact agreed upon by the arbitrators that it was an accident, then why is he getting punished? He didn’t cheat. Yeah, in the absolute world that those guys live in, in Colorado Springs, maybe it appears he broke the rules. And yeah, that’s fine, those rules were broken. But if you admit that he wasn’t trying to cheat, then you’re not solving anything by kicking that guy out for two years. You’re trying to keep people from cheating, right? That’s the point.

NR: I have to be honest — I am not familiar enough with the case to know that the arbitration panel agreed that Moninger hadn’t intended to cheat.

FL: I’ll go through the record. There are at least 10 cases like that, where the panel said yeah, well it’s obvious this guy didn’t intend to cheat. [Look at] this guy [Zach Lund] who tested positive for [the active ingredient in] Propecia. He in fact wrote it on his anti-doping list for many years, that he was taking it. The UCLA lab didn’t test for it because they didn’t believe it to be performance enhancing.

It was actually on the list because it was supposed to be a masking agent. It’s subsequently been taken off the list, because it doesn’t work as a masking agent, but that guy is f--ked. If you are going to admit that the guy didn’t intentionally try to cheat, then what is the purpose of punishing a guy? The punishment is supposed to be for cheating, not for accidents. In a race, if a guy accidentally takes a shortcut on the course, you take his name out of the results. You don’t ban him for two years.

I can ramble on about it forever, and I can go on a diatribe about one thing or the other. The fact is, the only way it’s ever going to get solved is when people like Steve Johnson and people at USADA and in positions of power enforce the rules on the riders, on the teams, and on themselves in exactly the same way.

NR: How would that scenario play out in your case? They would say the lab didn’t follow the rules — therefore the result is invalidated?

FL: That is what science is supposed to be. You can’t say, well the lab doesn’t really know what they are doing. We had all the lab technicians here in Malibu, and they all testified that they kind of just make it up as they go, and in fact they actually trained each other and nobody really trained them. And they don’t really know why it is they do what they do.

I mean, the girl that performed the test on my sample testified, under oath, that her own personal margin of error is double that of what the lab’s standard operating procedure documents say. To her, 1.6 parts per mL is significant, even though 0.8 is what it is supposed to be. Look, numbers aren’t negotiable in science. When you perform anything in math, it’s clear-cut, things are black and white. Even if the test itself is based on a probability, the way you get to that probability is numbers. If you say the margin of error is 0.8 and you aren’t able to, as in my case, perform the test within the margin of error of 1.2, then you can’t perform the test. You can’t say, well, that’s pretty close. No, you didn’t do [the test]. If the speed limit is 65 miles per hour, and you went 70, you went over the speed limit.

Most people, including Steve Johnson apparently, don’t have the will or the desire to go through all the science that was part of my case. And I can’t speak for other cases, I don’t know. But in our case, if it truly was science based on numbers and probability and so-called indisputable proof because of scientific studies that they have, then why did they bring in Joe Papp? Who the f--k is that guy?

Great, Joe Papp took drugs. I’ve never met that guy before that goddamned hearing. And if Papp does drugs, I hate to break the news to him, but he’s awful. That was just a tremendous waste of everyone’s time. If they are so sure, if your science is right, then why do you need those things?

NR: I understand your defense argument against mishandling of the original urine test, but how do you explain the presence of exogenous testosterone that showed during the carbon isotope ratio test?

FL: Let me try to make it simple. I understand you don’t have the time or the desire to spend an entire year of your life figuring it out, or you would understand it like I do. Nobody would go through this if they didn’t have to. Let me explain this in very basic terms, and I hope you’ll print this. I want people to understand the way this exogenous testosterone test works; because they’ve made it sound like it’s a very definitive test.

The test measures a carbon isotope ratio, because exogenous testosterone is based on a plant source, because it comes from a different carbon base than what is in your body. Here’s the thing: If you add a little bit of exogenous testosterone, which has a slightly different ratio, it changes the ratio that is exiting your body in urine by less than the actual amount than it is different.

I’ll just take an arbitrary number. Let’s just say your testosterone has a number of 5, and the exogenous testosterone has a number of 10. If you mix the two, half and half, it comes out with a number of 7.5, so it’s not clear, but it’s indicative that something is wrong. Now if you have a test that measures the number of 5, within a margin of error of 2, meaning if its 5 the test result could come out 3 or it could be 7, then if you get anything over 7 it’s safe to assume that something is wrong with the machine, or you’re not performing the test accurately. We come up with a line where there is a cut-off that says we can reasonably assume that this person used testosterone because this number, even with the margin of error, is odd. It shouldn’t exist. What you have is an area where someone could use testosterone and still be in the range, but you have to let them go because you don’t really know. Most things in science work that way — every test has a margin of error.

With this test, what they do is test a known negative sample, meaning not my urine, but a sample that they know is not using testosterone. They test that first to make sure that it comes out between 3 and 7, because if that comes out at 12, then the test is not working. Well they couldn’t do it.

Relatively speaking, my example is in no way directly comparable to the way that test works, just in a matter of numbers. But relatively speaking, what they did was say, this has to come out between 3 and 7, because we assume it’s 5, and our margin of error means it can be plus or minus 2. Their [known negative sample] came out to 7.4 and 1.3, but they said, well, whatever, that’s close enough. No, that’s not close enough. Your machine is not working, you f--ks. If you have a margin of error — and this lab in France specifically decided on its margin of error, they are the one that decided this parameter — if you can’t get yours within the margin of error, how the f--k do you know that mine is right? Here you are testing one you know is right. They knew the answer should be 5, and they knew the machine has variations, the answer is never going to just be 5, sometimes its 6, sometimes its 4, sometimes its 7, sometimes its 3, but that is the range we are aiming at, and we know the machine is working and we get that. But when you get 7.4 your machine is not working. And that is what they based their measurements on.

NR: What about the issue of the inconsistencies between the LNDD and other WADA-accredited lab parameters in measuring metabolite markers to determine exogenous testosterone?

FL: That whole metabolite thing was even further on down the line once they took that first result and assumed that was right. But at the very basic level, let’s say you have a car with a speedometer and you get a GPS unit, and you know this thing is right, it’s based on the satellite. And you’re trying to measure whether the speedometer is right or not. And you know the speedometer is not going to be perfect, and in fact, the GPS is not going to be perfect, but it should be within 3 miles an hour, plus or minus. Well if the GPS says you are going 30 miles per hour, and the speedometer says you’re going 75 miles per hour, the speedometer is not right, or the GPS is not right. Something is not right. You can’t take that GPS to another car, to check that speedometer, because something is wrong here, and you have to figure out what it is. You can’t make assumptions later, based on that, because it’s just not good enough. And that is what they did. And unfortunately, we’ve got these arbitrators who were coerced by the Olympic Committee, and they said, that’s good enough for us. And that’s not how it works. It can’t work that way. That’s not science.

NR: That’s quite an accusation — that the two arbitrators that voted against you were coerced by the Olympic Committee.

FL: Well what were they doing in Beijing, at a meeting before the hearing, with Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen and all of the Olympic Committee all together, making decisions about my case without consulting the arbitrator that I picked? Did you not know that happened?

NR: I recall reading about that, but I don’t know the details. When did that happen?

FL: That’s the problem. We tried to talk to people about this, but nobody listens, because once these guys accuse somebody, no one gives them the benefit of the doubt. I will send you the document written up by Chris Campbell himself, where these arbitrators made a decision about some motions that we filed in the case without ever consulting with him while they were in Beijing. I will send you the list of the people who were in Beijing with them, including Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen and the Olympic Committee themselves.

NR: When was that?

FL: Probably October or November of 2006. And if I had the money, if I had the resources at that point, I would have taken it to a federal court or a civil court to deal with it. But I can only fight so many fights. I was fighting a French f--king case at the same time.

NR: You’re referring to the Agence Française de Lutte contre le Dopage (AFLD), the French anti-doping agency?

FL: That was the other thing — I forgive Steve Johnson for not understanding that question. [The question was: “Why would the Canadians on the [AAA] panel start my suspension based on that date when the French AFLD has publicly announced that neither CAS, nor USADA, have jurisdiction in France? Do you believe that double jeopardy is acceptable?” – Ed.] That was not made clear.

NR: What is the status of your CAS appeal at this point?

FL: We wrote a brief, a legal argument, back in December, we’re waiting for one from them, which is due January 31. The hearing starts on March 19, and I think it’s supposed to last five days total. The parameters of how it is supposed to work are not like the USADA hearing. There won’t be witnesses testifying and then cross-examined. The direct testimony is in writing, and that is what USADA is writing now, and the cross-examination is in person. It won’t take as long as the USADA hearing, and it should be more refined and more narrowed down because obviously things got eliminated in the USADA hearing. Hopefully things like Greg LeMond and Joe Papp aren’t necessary because it’s really irrelevant anyway. Hopefully by March 25th or 26th the hearing will be over, and then they have an indefinite amount of time.

NR: Do you know who the mediators will be?

FL: I do. I’ll send you a list of them; I don’t remember their names. USADA picked a guy from New York. We picked a Swiss guy, and the chairperson is from New Zealand, David (Williams). I can’t remember the other two guys. [The other two panelists are American David Rivkin and Frenchman Jan Paulsson - Ed.]

NR: Where will it take place?

FL: We asked for it to take place in Los Angeles, but USADA asked for New York. It could have been anywhere, but I think New York is as fair as anywhere.