Los Angeles – Howard Jacobs’ law office sits above Wilshire Boulevard, the main drag of Beverly Hills where grand dreams, however gaudy, are realized. His client, whose poster adorns his wall, certainly has a gaudy dream.
Boulder cyclist Tyler Hamilton is trying to win a second appeal of his suspension for doping charges. It is his last hope. If he wins the appeal, scheduled from Tuesday through Friday in Denver, he likely will compete in next year’s wide-open Tour de France.
A loss and his cycling career is likely over at 34.
The odds are against him. His first appeal, to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in April, ended in defeat by a 2-1 vote. This time he goes up in front of the Lausanne, Switzerland- based Court of Arbitration for Sport just two weeks after serious drug allegations surfaced about Lance Armstrong, who retired this summer after winning his seventh consecutive Tour de France.
The current atmosphere in the international cycling atmosphere doesn’t appear conducive to forgiveness. Nevertheless, Jacobs, a former second- tier triathlete in the 1980s who has prosecuted from both sides of the fence, said he believes Hamilton has a good shot.
“I’m possibly more optimistic than I was the first time,” said Jacobs, 39.
Jacobs will need to convince three new arbitrators – two from the U.S. and one from Australia – who will want to see more evidence of Hamilton’s innocence. A lot more.
“So he’s going to appeal again with the same defense in front of CAS?” Dick Pound, director of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said from Montreal. “There’s no reason to believe that another panel of disinterested persons will find it any differently.”
Jacobs would not divulge any new evidence he has. However, he said Hamilton would have a better chance merely because this time his defense has had more time to prepare.
“The first hearing we did on an expedited basis because we wanted to get him eligible for racing, and it appeared to us that there were glaring errors in the test and we focused our defense on limited issues,” Jacobs said. “We didn’t go out and talk to 20 different experts.”
The crux of Hamilton’s defense is the test international cycling introduced last year. Hamilton tested positive for blood transfusions in which another person’s blood is injected into someone’s own blood supply, providing more red blood cells and, thus, more oxygen for better endurance.
Hamilton tested positive at the 2004 Summer Olympics after winning the gold medal in the time trial and again at the Tour of Spain. He was allowed to keep his medal after one of the test samples was mishandled, but the Tour of Spain test resulted in a two-year suspension.
Hamilton and Jacobs have two claims: One, Hamilton is a chimera, someone with different blood created from a twin who died in his mother’s womb; two, the test doesn’t test for false-positive results.
In the first appeal, Jacobs used testimony from scientists at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both of whom discussed flaws in the test. Jacobs plans more of the same.
“We’ve talked to a lot more experts, people who are well-respected, top of the industry, on all facets, anything that could possibly be related to this test, and they all have serious criticisms of the test,” Jacobs said.
Going heavily against Hamilton is circumstantial evidence. The only two cyclists who have tested positive for blood transfusions are he and Santiago Perez, his teammate on Swiss-based Phonak.
Hamilton, who won a recent race in New Hampshire that was not sanctioned by UCI, the governing body of international cycling, remains confident.
“I’m very optimistic,” Hamilton said. “I thought our chances were good in the first hearing although we were missing a lot of info, a lot of data on (our) own results,” he said. “Now that we have that data, we have a better case.”
Pound scoffed at the notion the test wasn’t valid because it had no false-positive tests.
“We don’t put tests out there unless we’re satisfied that there aren’t going to be false positives,” he said. “There’s no interest whatsoever in having some athlete who hasn’t doped to be convicted for it. We err on the side of being conservative and always have.”
If Hamilton does win, he believes he will return to Phonak for the 2006 Tour.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
