Murky world of doping

South African cyclist Daryl Impey was cleared of doping two weeks ago. His case is the latest in an ongoing saga within cycling, and asks some critical questions, not only of the South African anti-doping body that cleared him, but of the sport's global struggle to win back the confidence of former fans.

Some background: Impey, the first South African to wear the Tour de France's leader's yellow jersey in 2013, tested positive for the drug probenecid in February this year. Probenecid is not itself performance-enhancing, but masks other drugs which are.

It does this by blocking the excretion of the drug in question from the kidneys, so that when laboratories examine the athlete's urine, they cannot detect it. The other benefit to the athlete is that by blocking the excretion in the urine, probenicid keeps the drug level in their body higher for longer, giving greater benefits.

Impey's defence, introduced in detail at a hearing in Johannesburg was that he had accidentally ingested probenecid through no fault of his own. Hardly a new defence, Impey's was significantly more advanced than many before him. Specifically, he claimed that the probenecid in his body came from contamination of a pill counter at a pharmacy in Durban. This would have required the pharmacist in question to have dispensed probenecid in an uncoated form, because otherwise traces of it would not have remained behind, immediately prior to using the same pill counter to give Impey empty gelatin capsules.

Impey convinced the hearing of this by bringing in experts who testified that it was possible for the levels in his urine to have come from contamination this way. He also presented the pharmacist and receipts to establish a testimony and timeline of sales of the products in question. The hearing accepted this, without challenge.

Thus begins the controversy. On this matter, your position depends on which side of the fence you sat long before the name "Daryl Impey" ever entered the discussion. If you believe that cycling is dirty beyond salvation, and that "they all dope", then this decision is merely confirmation and entrenches your cynicism.

On the other hand, if you believe in Impey, then you're relieved and ready to condemn the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS) for incompetence. You are like Robbie Hunter, former SA pro, who condemned SAIDS and accused them of a witch-hunt targeting cycling, which is, in my opinion, the stupidest thing you can do from within a sport that so desperately needs to regain trust after years of deceit. Impey himself spoke about legal action against SAIDS for loss of earnings as a result of delays. I'd have thought the pharmacist might be the more appropriate target for such recourse.

In any event, the problem with the Impey story is that, no matter which side you view it from, there are spaces into which you can insert scepticism. There are a series of co-incidences in Impey's story, each of which alone would be plausible, but in sequence create a very small possibility (but, crucially, not a zero possibility). And there are procedural concerns on the other side, including the lengthy delay in dealing with a test that happened in February. Dr Shuiab Manjra last week wrote a compelling piece about the "cynical calculus" that SAIDS may have been pushed into by previous procedural errors - Ludwick Mamabolo, Comrades champion in 2012, was cleared after 14 errors in testing were discovered.

Ultimately, the source of the controversy is the lack of transparency around the entire process.

I would love to provide some insight into the specific details, but it's all conjecture, because so little is known. Where questions outnumber answers, people will always force their own "truths" into the vacuum.

For cycling, with its history of lies and deceit, those answers will rarely be favourable, and the Impey case does little to convince either side of progress.

The anti-doping struggle just got murkier.