FLoyd Landis Drug Test Discussion Thread -- Please post links to all articles here.

Hmmm. You know, I think I've heard speculation on a European cycling site about this, with references to the gambling angle (lots of money rides on who wins the TdF in europe.) I hope nobody on Phonak did it because I just don't know how Floyd would ever prove something like that. One of his teammates, Koos Moerenhaut of the Netherlands has come out & said he doesn't think he doped here.

Great stuff, leilani. Thanks! I'm jonesing for any info that tries to clarify this matter.

I'm not so sure "the french" as some ambiguous entity had much to gain by spiking the sample. Certainly the TdF has suffered - lost sponsorships, devalued prestige of the race, etc. This specific lab is different though. There's a real, proven problem with the people running those tests in that lab. Whether somebody there might have money riding on the outcome of these races or has some sort of weird nationalistic agenda or what, something's clearly not right when they're running unauthorized tests on old Armstrong samples & leaking bogus info to their friends at L'Equipe. They've breached protocol too many times to entertain any illusions that they're on the up&up.I'm still hoping that if a mass spectrometer test on the "clean" final sample can be done & shows no exogenous testosterone, Floyd has a slam dunk on the lab-tampering scenario. Something of that testosterone, however miniscule, would still be there on that screen if he had used a patch on the 17th stage.

Thank you!

Hey guys, I found your site doing a google. Seem like a lot of pro Landis people here. I wanted to inform you of a great new forum specifically for Floyd Landis fans.

www.floydlandisfans.com

Hope you will stop by, join and participate!

"Keep the Faith" - Floyd Landis

Thanks for the headsup, Hudson. er...nosduh!;-)

Cycling fans in the US wishing to watch the Hotter 'n Hell Spanish Vuelta this year have to pay €20 (25-26 $US) from cycling.tv or they can go the Stevie Wonder route & use balky update pages from the official site at lavuelta.com & a self-refreshing page at cycling news.OLN/Versus isn't covering at all until a wrap-up show September 17th? ;-(

Yesterday was the first stage in the mountains which knocked Thor off the podium. Pretty exciting stage. Put Danilo di Luca in yel..er, gold, but scrawny upstart Janez Brajkovic (Disco) stole the show & placed a whiff behind. Sastre & Valverde (favorites) are still in good positions as is Colorado-American Tom Danielson (Disco) Menchov, Vino & even Mayo probably lost too much time? Robbie McEwen even got disqualified for time yesterday & left without a sprint stage win to help him complete his 'triple crown'.

And you don't even want to ask where Cereal (Not Gonna Be A Factor) Diesel is.

Hey,€urøtwit, don't know if you hang around FR in the TdF off-season, but I've been wondering, did Thor Hushovd ride in the Giro this year? If so, any stage wins? I thought if anybody would know, you would.

FloydLandis.com,Floyd's blog, has a release on his lawyer Howard Jacob's motion for dismissal to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) Independent Anti-Doping Review Board. (Thanks to Ready4Freddy for the heads-up on this.) Of note in the filing:

"The one metabolite that has been identified by WADA-accredited laboratories as the best, and longest-term indicator, of exogenous testosterone usage was reported as negative in Landis’ urine samples...

These errors include markedly inconsistent testosterone and epitestosterone levels from testing on the ‘A’ sample as well as multiple mismatched sample code numbers that do not belong to Landis."

Floyd showed up at the Univest Grand Prix Criterium of Doylestown last Sun & gave interviews before the filing to several Philly area publications. At phillyburbs.com he says:

“The "B' sample was tested five weeks ago now, almost six weeks ago, but we waited until last Friday to get back the results. So we've been unable to do anything other than speculate why they came out that way,” said Landis, with Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, only the third American to win the Tour. “When I say the results, they obviously announced that vaguely they were positive. But we were given now, 300, almost 400 pages of documents for the actual tests to analyze.”

He said they submitted the "request for the case to be dropped because, based on the "A' and the "B' sample, there are too many contradictions for the two to be the same sample,” he said. “Assuming they disagree with that (request), then we will go to arbitration with the US Anti-Doping Association, their agency, I should say...So Monday we make a submittal, later in the week, Friday I guess, they will decide whether it goes to a hearing or not and if it does they'll decide on a date then, and I assume it will be December or January. That's the status at this time.”

At philly.com he said:

"We'll try to get more evidence," he said. "They refuse to provide information for us to make arguments. That's unacceptable... . I was tested eight times in the Tour. This one came in the middle. We'd like to show this was out of order in the series of tests." Landis said he was encouraged when track star Marion Jones' name was recently cleared after her backup sample was negative. "As you see, they just demonstrated that they misrepresented their test," he said. "They've been doing the same thing with the testosterone test. It's not cut-and-dry like they say... . They need to proceed from here on out with my case and everyone else in the interest of science and fairness, instead of making a name for themselves."

Landis says the legal defense process has been so time consuming that he's postponed hip surgery and his daily bike rides.