ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

[Sedat]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

The argument being they took a different type of Thymosin, and the TB4 was for someone else. As Essendon somehow managed to go through the entire 2012 season without any player being drug tested (!!) before coming clean about their injections in Feb 2013, it's difficult to prove what they took

I thought the case was stronger for AOD-9604, as it's something they admitted to taking

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...618-zsdqk.html

One is used for AIDS patients (Thymomodulin - the drug in Hirdy's mystery spreadsheet) and the other one (TB4) is a performance-enhancing peptide, one that Dank admitted to Nick McKenzie in his Age interview back in 2013 that he gave to the players. The evidence that the players were administered TB4 is as compelling as you can get without a positive drug test.

[Bornadog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

The evidence that the players were administered TB4 is as compelling as you can get without a positive drug test.

Can't agree with this statement, otherwise a guilty verdict would have been found. Not sure how you can actually say this, unless you have some evidence.

[Sedat]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Can't agree with this statement, otherwise a guilty verdict would have been found. Not sure how you can actually say this, unless you have some evidence.

See my post #957 for all the evidence you need. It all boils down to 'comfortable satisfaction' - the AFL tribunal placed 'comfortable satisfaction' impossibly high to be met (the Lance Armstrong case would have failed had the same comfortable satisfaction been required as it was by the AFL tribunal). The CAS will not place the comfortable satisfaction requirement anywhere near as high. Essendon and the players involved are in massive trouble - they know it, the AFL knows it, and the media knows it, which is why the media narrative has shifted towards "the big bad international body getting involved in our business", now that the AFL cannot stage-manage an outcome to suit their needs (like they have done on tanking, salary cap cheating, illicit drug use in recent years).

Nobody has ever been successful using the 'dog ate my homework' defence to win a doping case, and I think it will be difficult for EFC to do so in this case unless they can definitively prove what was injected into the players (which they can't, otherwise they would have produced this evidence 2 years ago). There is already enough evidence linking TB4 to the players, as per my pervious post, and it may well already be enough ''comfortable satisfaction'' for the CAS to convict the players with. Only time will tell.

[Topdog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

The argument being they took a different type of Thymosin, and the TB4 was for someone else. As Essendon somehow managed to go through the entire 2012 season without any player being drug tested (!!) before coming clean about their injections in Feb 2013, it's difficult to prove what they took

I thought the case was stronger for AOD-9604, as it's something they admitted to taking

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...618-zsdqk.html

Edit: sedat explains it all so perfectly. No point me chiming in.

[boydogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

one that Dank admitted to Nick McKenzie in his Age interview back in 2013 that he gave to the players

Link?

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Link?

This might be it:

DANK'S STUNNING ADMISSION

Date
June 13, 2014

Australia’s most infamous sports scientist paused for a moment before erupting. ''That’s just mind-blowing.''

Stephen Dank was giving a rare on-the-record interview in April 2013, and his reaction was justified. He’d just had a startling realisation.

I’d told him that the peptide he had, moments before, freely admitted giving Essendon players in 2012 had been added to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority's list of banned doping agents.

Previously, the peptide Thymosin Beta 4 (TB4) had only been captured under a catch-all World Anti-Doping Agency clause. Dank had previously claimed to be supremely confident of evading this clause by using his self-professed superior scientific wisdom about what could be deemed a performance-enhancing peptide.

But TB4’s arrival on a specific list of prohibited WADA substances made it clear that the anti-doping officials who Dank referred to as ''idiots'' weren’t convinced about Dank’s particular school of science.

ASADA’s probe into him was still in its infancy, but Dank knew why the listing of TB4 was bad news. It signalled that ASADA would be gunning for any players he had treated with the drug.

While still interviewing Dank, I rechecked the ASADA website and told Dank that it listed TB4 as ''prohibited in all routes and out of competition''.

Dank’s usual ebullience was quickly replaced by an unusual hesitation. ''Well, that must have just only come in this year,'' he said. ''I will get someone to speak to ASADA about that.''

But Dank never spoke to the agency’s investigators. In the end, they built their case without him in an inquiry that led them from a Chinese pharmaceutical company to a South Yarra chemist and, finally, to the issuing of show-cause notices to Bombers players this week.

ASADA’s retrospectively pieced-together version of events begins in 2011, with an alleged series of discussions between Dank, the now former Essendon high-performance coach Dean Robinson and the convicted drug trafficker-turned peptide supplier Shane Charter.

In August that year, ASADA alleges that Dank told Robinson via a text message that TB4 would be the ''cornerstone'' of his work at the Bombers because it could accelerate player recovery.

Charter has alleged to ASADA that Dank then asked him to source the peptide. On November 26, 2011, Charter flew to China – home to dozens of pharmaceutical companies willing to deal with anyone with a cheque book.

In Shanghai, Charter alleges a company called Gio Biochem Ltd sold him the raw ingredients to make TB4. Charter has given ASADA the texts he alleges he sent to Dank several weeks after his return to Melbourne, including a message that inquired ''which peptides do you need next?''

The reply listed ''Thymosin Beta 4'' and one other banned peptide. A short time later, Charter sent a text to South Yarra compounding chemist Nima Alavi, stating, ''Hi Mate. Thymosin – 20 x 5ml vials. Steve's request.''

On January 12, 2012, as Essendon ramped up its pre-season training, Charter emailed a longer missive to Dank and Alavi about the use and storage of TB4 for ''research purposes''. Included in this email was the suggestion that TB4 was most effective when administered at the rate of one subcutaneous injection ''per week for 6 consecutive weeks, then 1 vial per month''.
This advice would later form a key piece of the puzzle later assembled by ASADA. This was because it matched the frequency of injections of a drug described only as ''thymosin'' on the consent forms given to Bombers players treated by Dank.
Another piece of the puzzle is an email that allegedly reveals that Dank was told in writing – presumably by ASADA or WADA –- in May 2012, that TB4 may be captured by the catch-all WADA clause prohibiting the use of certain peptides.

It is at this time that Dank allegedly conjured up the proposition that the ''Thymosin'' that some Bombers were given was actually a drug in the Thymosin family called ''Thymomodulin''.

ASADA alleges that Dank later emailed Alavi a document, which the compounding chemist signed and which stated that Thymomodulin had been prepared by Alavi ''in accordance with the WADA code''.
In was seven months later, in February, 2013, that the federal government called a press conference to release the explosive Australian Crime Commission report exposing the use of banned peptides in professional sport.

By now, ASADA’s hastily assembled team of ex-cops and lawyers were, in tandem with the AFL’s integrity unit (in an unprecedented partnership the Bombers believe may have tainted the evidence-gathering process) working overtime to piece together precisely what the man at the centre of the ACC report had done at Windy Hill.
Dank, though, was an elusive target. He refused ASADA and the AFL’s advances, instead choosing to drop tidbits in interviews with journalists.

In early April 2013, Dank not only told me he used TB4 on Essendon players but said he did so because there was ''very good data that supports Thymosin Beta 4''.

When I told him that according to the ASADA website, WADA had specifically banned the drug, he said the move was ''just mind-blowing''.

''I think they’ve only just put that in to back up their case'' against the Bombers, he said.

A day later, when I told Dank that The Age was set to publish his comments about TB4, he asked to clarify his interview. He never meant to refer to Thymosin Beta 4, he told me. The drug he had given the Bombers players was in fact Thymomodulin.

Dank and the Bombers have hung onto this claim ever since.

In contrast, ASADA believes the information supplied to it by Charter, Alavi and others is enough to convince an anti-doping tribunal that a case has been made out.

Still, circumstantial cases can always falter. And if Dank was prepared to testify to ASADA that he sourced TB4 for his private customers only rather than the Bombers, it could potentially bolster the players’ defence. Yet the evidence, circumstantial as it may be, suggests Dank has his own good reasons to stay in the shadows.


From: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...613-zs7ea.html

[boydogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

That does not read well for Stewart Crameri

[LostDoggy]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

My Bomber-loving grandmother made a point the other night: if they're cleared in an impartial court in Switzerland, I'll have to shut my mouth about the AFL being corrupt, backroom deals, etc.

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

My Bomber-loving grandmother made a point the other night: if they're cleared in an impartial court in Switzerland, I'll have to shut my mouth about the AFL being corrupt, backroom deals, etc.

Yep. There will be some hats being eaten that day.

[hujsh]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

My Bomber-loving grandmother made a point the other night: if they're cleared in an impartial court in Switzerland, I'll have to shut my mouth about the AFL being corrupt, backroom deals, etc.

No you don't. What about the tipoff to Essendon so they can shred their evidence

[jeemak]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

No you don't. What about the tipoff to Essendon so they can shred their evidence

But....but.....but....I thought that was a ploy to somehow ensure James Hird was in the gun?

I'm not sure how your logic senses work, but if you believe the Hird family, that's the whole reason why Pretty Boy doesn't have a case to answer!

[Greystache]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

WADA have announced they're appealing the Dank verdict as well. Obviously they weren't satisfied with the AFL's approach of making him the scapegoat but not finding him guilty of anything that could incriminate Essendon's players. The AFL must be furious their carefully constructed outcomes aren't just being swallowed by the gullible supporters and the sycophantic media and then buried like normal.

LINK

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

I hope they get him but I have no faith in the cowboys who are running the clown show at WADA or ASADA.

[Happy Days]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/how-essendon-lost-the-chance-to-draft-marcus-bontempelli/story-fni5f6kv-1227378513876

Jesus if we did this then I would have burnt down the Whitten Stand.

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/af...-1227378513876

Jesus if we did this then I would have burnt down the Whitten Stand.

That's such a beautiful story that I almost cried. my heart bleeds for them.