Posted on 07/28/2006 4:49:10 AM PDT by commish
Making a central thread for people to link articles, post comments, discuss, etc -- the Floyd Landis, Tour de France Doping scandal.
Call off the dogs! Scanned from # 1 on. Think I got my answer regarding Test B
;)
Think I got my answer regarding Test B
Hear here, of course! This has not been a great typing day for R4F, and it's early yet! :>(
FYI, here's the transcript from Floyd's Larry King interview. It's long...
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/28/lkl.01.html
And this ending quote is for you Bay. Make sure to set your Tivo...
LANDIS: Thank you both, Brent and Larry.
KING: Thank you. Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France, and Dr. Brent Kay, his personal physician.
By the way, Sheryl Crow will be our special guest on Monday night on LARRY KING LIVE.
Thanks.
Thanks for the ping. Interesting.
Toxicologist says testosterone can have great short-term effect
By Michelle Kaufman McClatchy Newspapers
MIAMI - A forensic toxicologist in Nashville and author of the book ``Drug Testing in Sports'' questioned the assertion by some experts that it would not make sense for suspended Tour de France winner Floyd Landis to have taken testosterone for a quick boost of energy and strength before his Stage 17 breakaway......(snip) [Dr. David Black] said an injection of testosterone would have a "profound" short-term effect on an athlete.
"I have injected myself with testosterone in doing research, and I can tell you from personal experience that within hours, you feel a profound psychological change, a sense of well-being, aggression and energy," Black said.
"You feel strong and powerful. And your endurance is definitely improved. So, it's not peculiar to me that a cyclist would take testosterone after a bad day. What does seem peculiar is that an athlete of that caliber would put himself at such great risk, knowing that they test for testosterone."
Also, there's some confusion about the fact that L'Equipe has been reported by at least 2 american papers (SJ Mercury News & LA Times) that I know of to have claimed in yesterday's edition that they have knowledge that the mass spectometry of the carbon isotopes of FL's urine sample has already been done and it indicates the presence of synthetic testosterone. On the website, I could find no mention of that in their news articles available for free, but the Friday edition (the one with FL on the cover saying "Landis's Foul" these 2 american papers cite is only available for purchase. (Seems odd that l'Equipe wouldn't have something trumpeting their coup about it on their homepage though). The only other reference I could find in the limited time I have to look this aft. was at radio france's sports section which says that L'equipe's anti-doping specialist (unnamed by RadioFrance) has said that the the testosterone is of exogenous origin, but that could just be an unsubstantiated opinion? It must be said that, even if the california papers are correctly characterising the french paper's claim, L'Equipe doesn't have the best reputation for accuracy however. I read somewhere else (Bloomberg maybe?) that a german TV station is claiming that the ratio is super high, like 1:11 or 1:12. Anyway, I think we need to keep track of the bad news as well as the good.
July 29, 2006
PARIS (AP) -- Three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond says the doping charges against fellow American Floyd Landis could be "what cycling has needed for many years" in order to discourage cheating.
"If he is confirmed positive, I hope he has the courage to tell the truth," LeMond said in an interview with French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche released on Saturday. "He alone can change the face of the sport today. His example could be a symbol of change."
...more...
He makes me puke.
Landis Is On Message, but Points Are Disputed by Juliet Macur & Gina Kolata (NYT Sat 07.29.06)
(snip)...some of the information Landis provided about the doping test runs counter to an explanation of the situation by the chief medical officer of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body...Landis was guarded in teleconferences Thursday and yesterday and said he did not know what his ratio was, but Mario Zorzoli, the cycling union’s medical officer, said the union always provided a complete report on the test — including the testosterone ratio — to the rider and the team.
“The athlete receives the report that we receive,” Zorzoli said in a telephone interview from Brazil. “Of course the rider gets that information.”...Landis has said that he has naturally high levels of testosterone and did not take the hormone. He was subjected to eight doping tests during the Tour, and he said it was possible that he did not get a positive result in the other tests because those other samples might not have been tested for testosterone. But Zorzoli said every sample provided by cyclists was tested for the hormone in the routine test conducted by all laboratories. “Every sample is tested for the complete menu — the usual menu,” Zorzoli said
(snip)...If Landis had a naturally high ratio of testosterone, it should have showed up in the drug tests he has taken throughout his career. Since his tests were never questioned until now...William Bremner, an endocrinologist and chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Washington, said some men had naturally high ratios of testosterone. “There are a few men who have ratios as high as 8 to 1 or 10 to 1,” he said. ...Bremner said it was possible that alcohol would temporarily elevate the testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio. Scandinavian studies showed such an effect, Bremner said, adding that the researchers also noted that they could test for alcohol in the same urine samples. So, perhaps Landis’s claims that he was drinking could be confirmed by testing his samples...
(snip)...cyclists have tested positive for testosterone in the past — as recently as 2002, when Stefan Rütimann of Switzerland failed a test. (snip)An athlete might take an amount of testosterone that he believes will not produce an excessively high ratio.
What if Landis took testosterone in desperation after Stage 16, thinking it would help him the next day? If an athlete rubbed on a testosterone gel or applied a patch that released the hormone, his level would rise for only a day or two, Bremner said. Other tests, before and after that day, would probably be normal.
The key is to look at the pattern of Landis’s tests and see if his testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio is consistent or whether it varied, said John McKinlay, the senior vice president and chief scientist at the New England Research Institutes.
“You don’t get variations in human beings,” he said. “If there is a spike that coincides with that day when he did fantastically well, that answers the question.”
Unless, of course, alcohol raised his testosterone level. Or unless the test was in error. Or unless the B sample shows a normal ratio, in which case he would be cleared. In the meantime, Landis is being tried in the court of public opinion.
“The notion that you are innocent until proven guilty might be a uniquely American ideal,” said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a Duke University law professor. “It certainly is not the ideal in cycling.”
I still have not yet been able to find any clarification on the claim by LAT & SJ Merc News that L'Equipe has allegedly claimed a source saying that the carb isotope spectrometry was already done on the "A" & detected synthetic test. Still nothing on the lequipe site, free articles at least. Has anybody else heard anything more about this? Aargh! Sports journalists never seem to ask the truly relevant questions or address the most pertinent issues. Drives me nuts.
GL's position as 'elder statesman' has always seemed a bit odd to me. It's not like all the US riders who came after hold him in awe, as riders from other countries do their predecessors.
They certainly give him props for paving the way - Landis, et al, have said that the current crop of US riders were inspired as they watched him compete in the Tour. But he was gone from the scene long before these 30-somethings arrived and started making a name for themselves, rode (by necessity) on a European team, didn't have much of a winning personality, etc.
He was a bit before his time, and perhaps conciousness of the seminal role he played in the ascent of American racing was lost in the period between his wins & the later dominance & fame of US Postal / DSC / Lance, etc....
I can't stand to watch that whiner whenever he is on OLN during the Tour. I made the mistake of watching a segment with him during this last one, and he was whining about what a backstabber Bernard Hinnault had been. He is a crybaby.
Seriously! He has issues. I just wish he would keep them to himself.
This is making me absolutely sick. Everywhere you look Landis' picture is on the cover of a newspaper with the "doping" headline. Most people don't pay enough attention to know what is going on so even if he is totally cleared this week, the stain remains. For someone as squeaky clean as him, it is terrible. I just hope they catch the creep that released the results from the A sample. Regardless of how this all turns out, that was unconscionable!
Floyd's fellow cyclists are coming out to defend him, or at least to defend the process of fair play. Lance Armstrong implores Floyd to fight it vigorously as he did on ABC's This Week click for 2 min video scroll to "Armstrong's Advice for Landis
."I've lived that life. I know what it's like to be accused of things…my suggestion would be if you're innocent, if you believe you're innocent, then you stand up and fight for it. That's what I did for — have done for the better part of 10 years."
"I've said this and I've said that. At the end of the day, there's no proof. But you've got to fight back and you've got to answer the questions and you've got to be very specific and be very aggressive. And if that means talking to the press, if that means suing somebody, if that means writing about it, thinking about it, talking about it, you have to do it."
( Lance's quotes retrieved from an article in the National Ledger (AZ) in brief wrapup article today by Josh Hart)
. Elsewhere Dave Shields begs for folks to give Floyd the benefit of the doubt in the Daily Peloton pub'd 07.30.06 click here fore Dave as does Chris Hrenko in Vermont's Times Argus click for Chris H.
I've read in several places this am that the second "B" sample results should be out as early as today.(? He only asked for them Sat.?) If so, I don't think (&, as he has said, even Landis doesn't think) we can entertain the hope that the results will be any different than the "A", but perhaps we'll get some of the blanks filled in, like the ratio & the isotope test results. No matter what, it's going to be a long hard road ahead for Floyd Landis & his family. Months if not years. But, like Lance says, if you really didn't do the crime, you've got to fight it like it was the Alpe d'Huez all over again. Prayers for them all.
That's what's driving me now. Somebody in that lab is unethical beyond belief. Lance Armstrong told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday defending Floyd: "I can't help but be aware the lab that found this suspicious reading is the same one that was at the center of the 'L'Equipe affair." [The French newspaper, L'Equipe, said samples taken from Armstrong during the 1999 Tour de France and then frozen tested positive for the blood-booster EPO. The International Cycling Union commissioned a report that later cleared Armstrong of the doping allegations.]
"When an independent investigator contacted the lab, they wouldn't answer the simplest of questions, wouldn't go into their testing ethics, who did the tests, etc., etc.," Armstrong said. "I don't personally have a ton of faith in that lab. I think they should lose their authorization and the report pretty much supports that."
This lab at Chatenay-Malabry (France) has already raised a boatload of serious suspicions about it's ethical integrity with regard to the steady stream of leaks coming out of there to their friends at L'Equipe. It's already demonstrated it has an agenda beyond that of scientific inquiry with that alone. And it fails to conform to even fundamental internationally recognized standards of professional accountability. That much is irrefutable. That the TdF & UCI continue to use a lab surrounded by so much controversy for so many years to analyze their atheletes' samples seriously undermines their so-called "Anti-Doping" campaign and indeed the legitimacy of the entire Tour itself.No matter what happens to Floyd this week, these guys have to be put out of business.How can anybody trust any results, no matter what they are coming out of a place that seems so much more obviously concerned about what's in the next issue of L'Equipe than what's on their spectrometers?
I won't disagree with that, but we shouldn't be putting the blame on the lab for the leaking of the A sample, because we really don't know who leaked it. When an A test comes back positive, the rider, his team, his federation, his national anti-doping agency and the world anti-doping agency are all notified. Everybody is supposed to keep it secret. I don't know if the info was leaked, or if it was just speculation due to the circumstances that made people think it was Floyd. Phonak obviously confirmed the speculation on Thursday, but was there truly a leak before that?
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