OPINION

By Sally Jenkins

Columnist

updated 9:34 a.m. ET April 25, 2007

Sally Jenkins Columnist

Personally, I wouldn't want to take a drug test at the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory, would you? Lately, the French lab has demonstrated more leakiness than airtight science. The lab apparently has fresh evidence that Floyd Landis cheated in last year's Tour de France -- and as usual, its findings wound up in the newspaper L'Equipe before you could say "n'est pas." There are so many leaks from the lab that you wonder if it's symptomatic of an all-around leakiness in the place, a sloppiness of process, accidental spillage.

Landis certainly appears guilty of putting testosterone into his Gumby-like body during the 2006 tour. But that's why the slipshod conduct of the anti-doping authorities is all the more aggravating. What should be an open-and-shut case has been confused by the sloppiness of the French lab, and the blindly prosecutorial behavior of the World Anti-Doping Agency and its underling, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which threaten to compromise the facts and make the accused, Landis, look like a victim.

Landis has accused the lab of "gross negligence and scientific malfeasance" for the way it handled his test results, and frankly, he has a bit of an argument. His legal team has demonstrated some startling procedural errors in the testing of his original "A" sample at Chatenay-Malabry, including the disconcerting fact that both the athlete and lab identification numbers on the sample are plain wrong. Landis's ID number was 995474. The paperwork on his "A" sample is labeled 994474.

There are other examples of mis-numberings, as well as typos, and illegible scrawls in crucial documents. All of which Landis has posted on a Web site, www.FloydFairnessFund.org. Landis's attorneys rightly ask, if the lab couldn't even accurately label and track the sample, how are we supposed to believe it properly carried out the more complex analytic steps of confirming a positive test?

No wonder the USADA decided it needed to bolster its case against Landis last week. In preparation for a May 14 arbitration hearing, the USADA asked the lab to test seven additional samples taken from Landis during the tour for evidence of synthetic testosterone. The results came back positive, according to L'Equipe. Landis's attorneys are furious, arguing the leak indicates the extent of the lab's poor practices and unethical conduct, and they also complain that Landis's designated representative was denied access to watch the lab's analysis. Landis accused the lab of "potentially deliberate falsification of results and the willful destruction of evidence."

On CBS Tuesday morning, a calmer Landis said, "If it's going to be objective, the least you could do is send it to a lab that doesn't have motivation to confirm their work in the first place."

This is a very good and rational point, even if it does come from a suspected doper. Look, Landis is a bad messenger -- and he may well be indefensible. It's entirely possible that the man charging the doping system with corruption is guilty of it himself. But that doesn't mean his message is without merit.

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