[Cagey]

Confirmed ping for your list.

[Republicain]

Very vary sad for the Tour de France...

[dakine]

What a maroon...

[Reform4Bush]

You know, as much as I was rooting for the guy, I was simply shocked by his performance in the critical stage after completely bonking in the previous stage.

I wondered what caused the turnaround myself, and as much as I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt I just can't. My first instinct was he did something, and his inconsistent reasons for testing high hasn't changed my opinion at all.

While I'm not a competetive cyclist, I ride quite a bit (well, not as much the last few years) so I'm not judging as someone who hasn't ridden a bike since they rode their Huffy when they were 12. His turnaround was unprecedented, and I just can't buy it was anything other than a result of taking something he shouldn't have.

[Vision]

The International Cycling Union announced early Saturday morning that Landis had officially failed a drug test from the race. In response, his Swiss-based Phonak team fired him. Landis also may become the first Tour champion in the race’s 103-year history to be stripped of his title because of doping allegations.

[stocksthatgoup]

[GeronL]

Mark Levin Voice: what a dope!

[JustDoItAlways]

Elevated testosterone over 1 day wouldn't improve peformance. Normally, it is an indication of steroid use which usually takes weeks and months to have an impact.

But this testosterone was supposedly a synthethic derivative. The designer steroid that Barry Bonds was using also left a sythethic testosterone signal (which only became detectable in the last 2 years.)

Maybe he took a cocktail of drugs (one of which was a new designer steroid.) Maybe he was blood doping (using frozen oxygenated blood from a time before when he was taking 'roids or even from another person who was using.)

[RoadTest]

Between the San Francisco Chronicle and the French doping dopes, does anybody American have a chance? Talk about a stacked deck!

[gettheUNout]

This reminds me of Rosie Ruiz,the lady that cheated in a marathon race back in 1981.Its very disappointing to learn someone has stooped so low to win in sports.Landis is the biggest fraud of the decade and needs to be stripped of his title

[yobid]

"Floyd Landis and his legal camp have denied that Landis ever used performance enhancing drugs. "I have never taken any banned substance, including testosterone," said Landis. "I was the strongest man in the Tour de France, and that is why I am the champion. I will fight these charges with the same determination and intensity that I bring to my training and racing. It is now my goal to clear my name and restore what I worked so hard to achieve."

I'm sticking with the champ. High T/e in one test out of several is very suspect, IMO. So are the French.

[jimboster]

Perhaps he does has naturally high levels of testosterone since his mother is Donald Rumsfeld!

[Spaulding]

I don't think Floyd cheated. Bonking in the mountains in 90 degree heat is not a great surprise. That he came back isn't either. The teams who could have caught him earlier didn't think he'd last. The power output for the climbs is well within has measured capabilities.
There were advantages to riding in the front. Floyd is not great at accelerating (some great distance runners like Emile Zatopek used bursts to bury opponents) as Popovich clearly is, but he is great at steady pace. Once in front he had two big advantages: 1) He could control his power output and not have to deal with attacks - keep his pace steady. 2) His team car was right behind him. He used 72 water bottles to keep his body temperature down, a critical factor in 96 degree heat and 5 climbs. Everyone in the peloton had to be paced by the peloton, wait fot team members to bring food and water, and derived no aerodynamic advantage because the stage was mostly hills (and Floyd is a great descender).
His bonk may have been heat, but may also have been a failure to eat enough; he still finished ahead of 130 riders.
If you are interested, listen to the interview with his doctor at http://www.simplystu.org/ . People who have known Floyd say no way. And Dr. Lim would lose his license and livelihood if he were a party to it. Lim says that the first thing he did was ask Floyd if there was anything to it. Floyd said absolutely not, and is famous for his brutal honesty.
I believe there is a move to go to court to try to get to the bottom of who might have set him up.

[US admirer]

I'm fed up with all of this. I agree with Diana Nyad: doping should be legal in sport. Period.

[MizSterious]

At first, I thought it might have been some of those French sour grapes they use for their bad wine--but it now seems he might be what they say he is--a common cheater.

[RichardW]

I've been saying for sometime now that there was no way to finesse synthetic testosterone. It was a slam dunk. Guilty as charged. The real loser here is not Landis but the Tour, the greatest sporting event in the world. And that's a damned shame.

[Ragnar54]

One question that needs to be resolved is whether there was any tampering with the samples after they were taken. There are several tests that could be made:

1. DNA testing to make sure that the samples are actually from Landis.
2. Comparison of the drug levels in the two samples. If the samples were individually doctored, it would be difficult to insure that the levels were almost the same. One would expect that the second sample would have a slightly lower level (IIRC, they were taken 20 minutes apart).
3. Analysis of the samples for byproducts of testosterone. If the testosterone was actually in Landis, it should have produced higher levels of such byproducts.

[SmoothTalker]

Say it ain't so Floyd. I thought you were a hero. Now it appears you were nothing but a cheater.

[Sofa King]

The only real hope left for Landis being innocent is the lab turning out to be crooked. If they had backup samples that the lab hasn't touched yet, they could test them somewhere else and see what they find.

Right now though, it looks like he's guilty. I'm not going to be caught in the trap of trying to come up with more and more ridiculous excuses as the evidence piles up.

[gura]

Shouldn't the "B" sample of been tested in a different, independant lab in an blind testing procedure with several dummy samples thrown in instead of just grabbing his B sample and running through the same people who leaked inaccurate results to the press to demonize him before the B sample was ever tested?

Wait, that would make sense.....