Posted on 07/28/2006 4:49:10 AM PDT by commish
Just think how good this will all feel once Landis becomes the hero again and the whole rotten story is exposed.
Yahoo! Sports - Report: Synthetic testosterone found in Landis urine sample
(Landis' spokesman) Henson said Landis sent a signed request to the French lab around 12:30 p.m. Eastern yesterday, which was about 6:30 p.m. in Paris. Jose Maria Buxeda, one of Landis’s two Spanish lawyers, told The Associated Press that he had also sent a fax to U.C.I. yesterday afternoon to request that the B sample analysis go forward.
But Pat McQuaid, the president of U.C.I., said last night that the organization never received that request. He said U.C.I. contacted the French lab at 5 p.m. in Paris and that Landis’s request had not yet been received.
McQuaid said U.C.I. then asked the lab to analyze Landis’s B sample, which he said was allowed under the organization’s rules, so the test could be concluded before the lab closed for a two-week vacation this Friday. If the tests cannot be finished before then, the results may not come until late August or early September, he said.
Over at Bloomberg News they discuss Landis' (&Gatlin's) odds of beating bans from their respective sports.click 4 bloomberg source
Andrew Hood, Velonews's european correspondent says that the whole mess will be with us for a while without resolution: "...the entire disciplinary and appeal process could last until late this year, meaning Landis will likely officially retain his Tour de France crown until that process is completed. " click 4 velonews article
Celebrity Dominoes, anyone?Uneffinbelievable.
But I thought I saw another article wherein McQuaid said that the UCI had the right under their own rules to request the 'B' test.
So if UCI has the right to request the test, but they can't test it without Landis' permission, what's the point...
If Patrick McQuaid and the UCI think that jumping the gun & performing the second test without Landis's people present
Found it, it was in the NYT article:"Pat McQuaid, the president of the cycling body, which is known by its French acronym, U.C.I., said last night that the organization had contacted the French lab at 5 p.m. in Paris to see if Landis’s request had been received. When the lab said no, McQuaid said U.C.I. asked the lab to analyze Landis’s B sample, which he said was allowed under the organization’s rules. McQuaid wanted the test to be concluded before the lab closed for a two-week vacation this Friday. If the tests cannot be finished before then, the results may not come until late August or early September, he said."
snip. More:"UCI president Pat McQuaid said Tuesday he had not seen the lab findings and could not confirm the report, but the cycling body had asked the French lab to speed up its analysis.
McQuaid said the uncertainty was not good for the sport.
"The longer it goes until the 'B' sample is tested, the more speculation, and the more denial and the more of everything that goes on," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
Analysis of the B sample is a "2-1/2 day operation," he said, and the lab closes this weekend for the August vacation period.
Landis' lawyers in Spain filed an official request for the "B" test late Monday. But Carpani said the UCI had already filed its own request earlier Monday because of concerns about the case dragging on.
Thanks, leilani, I was pretty sure I'd seen that somewhere.
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending the Tour de France Champion, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
(for those who still care about the integrity of this process)
The AP's article by Jamie Keaton today, a good summary of what's on the plate, has Floyd's spokesman confirming that the T/E ratio was 11:1. It also has a dramatic about face by UCI's prez Pat MCQuaig who has now decided that his previous overeager condemnations of Mr.Landis w/o benefit, by his own admission, of the actual lab test results might have been bad PR for the UCI. He has seen the light & now wants to genuflect at the altar of due process.
(snip)"FL UCI president Pat McQuaid said he had not seen the test results, but emphasized Landis was presumed innocent until found guilty and guaranteed the cyclist would be given the chance to defend himself in front of an arbitration panel before any penalties would be imposed.
"It could take weeks," McQuaid told The Associated Press by telephone.
McQuaid added that even if the "B" sample confirms the "A" results, no penalties would be decided "until the disciplinary process is completed." That process could also drag out if Landis decides to appeal a UCI ruling before the Court of Arbitration for Sport."
This article also offers my entry for the best quote of the day, from Dick Pound:
"Asked about the Landis case, Dick Pound, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said, "I sure would hate to be the brand manager for cycling right now."
By my lights, one of the clearest, most dispassionately composed & best articulated pieces I have read to date in one place with respect to the current situation is from wallstreetjournal.com's "The Numbers Guy", Carl Bialik. He discusses the studies about alcohol's impact on T/E readings, the reliability of those pesky isotope tests, and "chemical McCarthyism".
click for wsjonline assessment of the alcohol defence & sundry issues
For a really good, short explanation of how the IRMS test distinguishes natural from synthetic testosterone, a blogging organic chemistry geek explains it concisely in a way that even I understood: read organic chem phd blogger's entry about FL here
And if that doesn't do the trick for ya, there's always the wikipedia translation from the original bwteimish to english explanation of the mass spectometry used to read the testosterone fingerprint in question here.
Finally, here's a quickie projected timeline for Floyd, the lab & the UCI's expected title-stripping scenario at the WaPo: news service time table summary
"it could take weeks".
And Floyd still gets the short end in the meantime.
Thanks for that great summary and the links, leilani.
"bwteimish"? Yöö møsst be bullwinkleshitzen me;)
PS Finally located photos of the overturned bus, whew! Had to go all the way to Norway. Will post later on ðe french fat møøse.
YAY! Looking forward to more on the moosethread!Have an afternoon appt., so I'll see ya over there probably tonight.
If all that is necessary to disqualify your competition is to arrange for him or her to injest a powdered testosterone tablet, then competitive athletes should not injest food and drink purchased or prepared by strangers.
I have no idea if that is what happened to Landis, but it seems a realistic possibility.
Finally, somebody takes the UCI loudly to task for it's astoundingly unethical conduct handling Floyd Landis' test results. Not soon enough for me, either; the notion that this is an impartial organization fit to enforce cycling's compliance with rules has been pretty well shot to hell in a bikebasket given their outrageous misconduct from the first day this story was leaked a week ago.
The guy giving the international cycling union a public whipping is none other than Floyd Landis' brand spanking new attorney, Howard Jacobs of Los Angeles who has some experience defending athletes accused of doping - he represented cyclist Tyler Hamilton and sprinter Tim Montgomery.Taking a page out of Johnny Cochran's playbook, he goes after the "bad cops" right out of the box. The Associated Press report, carried everywhere this morning says:
"The attorney for cyclist Floyd Landis criticized the International Cycling Union on Wednesday for leaking the results of the Tour de France winner's positive "A" sample drug test, saying it breached the organization's own rules.
Results of the second or "B" sample are expected to be released Saturday, and until they are completed, "it should be strongly noted that there is not even a formal doping charge that has been filed against Mr. Landis," attorney Howard Jacobs said.
Jacobs said he was "troubled by the actions of the UCI and how they have spoken out about this case, which is in direct contravention of the UCI's own rules and the World Anti-Doping Code. source article at HouChron here
Vicki Michaelis at USA Today adds this: "Jacobs also said the documentation sent to him by the French lab that performed the tests on Landis' samples contains a claim that the carbon isotope test is positive, proof Landis ingested synthetic testosterone. "But there's zero documentation supporting that — nothing," said Jacobs...."Ultimately, they're going to have to back that up."
...Jacobs criticized the UCI for leaking the results of the Tour de France winner's A sample. That action breached the organization's rules, which he says "prohibit any public statement by the UCI until completion of an athlete's B testing at the absolute earliest."
Juliet Macur's article this am in the NYT registration required uses the AP story but adds:
“He wants to be ready to defend himself, in case the B sample comes back positive,” Jacobs said in a telephone interview. “I’m not one to accept what the lab says as proof. I haven’t seen the document. You need to see documentation to see how they got their numbers.”
Me again: Only time will tell if Floyd Landis needs to lose his job, but we don't need to wait for any stinkin' lab test to know already that the McQuaid gang deserves immediate suspension & total disqualification from ever serving in any capacity overseeing anything to do with athletics ever again. The UCI admonishing an athlete for cheating is like Louis Farrakhan repudiating Mel Gibson for his insensitivity towards Jews. When they've made it quite clear they have no intention of complying with their own ethical codes, their moral authority in adjudicating cyclists' compliance with theirs is destroyed. Floyd can confess to smoking crack at his grandmother's funeral for all it really matters; the UCI needs to be slapped with a ban upside the head itself!
Well, it seems the news about the FL case is sooo slow today, blogospherians are beginning to ponder more tangentially related conundra; Here's one from a guy commenting on an entry in the Boulder Report at Bicycling.com:
"This is all very depressing, so in a perhaps vain attempt at injecting (no pun intended) some humor, here's a semi-serious scenario/question.
According to reports, on Jul 16, the day before the "etape fantastique," Floyd's teammate Axel Merckx told Eddy, who needs no introduction here, that Floyd was going to do something spectacular the next day.
Eddy dutifully laid 100 euro on Floyd winnng the stage on Jul 17 and apparently pocketed a neat 7,500 euros (odds were 75:1). (Not that he probably needs it.) So here's the question. If test B upholds the T:E ratio, and/or, as is now rumoured, the isotope data indicating exogenous testosterone, should Eddy give the 7,500 euros back?"
Ready, set, discuss, freepers.
(Thanks to Ready4Freddy for teaching me how to link to downthread posts!:-D )
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