In Defense of Floyd Landis

This whole story reeks. There are serious questions that are left unanswered after Landis' has been tried and convicted in the press and the court of public opinion. Why use testosterone in the middle of the race, when it has NO short-term benefit? Why was his first positive test after Stage 17, after the riders had been tested AT LEAST twice a day during the entire Tour? How was the story leaked, and by whom, before the results were formally announced?

If Landis wanted to artificially recuperate after his cracking on Stage 16, there are far more effective means than testosterone to do that. He had 3 or 4 team doctors with him, and anyone with half a brain would realize that testosterone wouldn't work in that circumstance. And if he did choose to use testosterone to recover, why not add a little epitestosterone to mask it and pass the test?

Even members of the World Anti-Doping Agency quesiton this result. http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=2532029

These are all probably questions that it is too late to answer. His reputation is in ruins, and the media (and uninformed) can just say "Testosterone" in very much the same fashion others said "WMD" a few years ago. The whole thing is sad on Landis' behalf, because regardless of how the appeals process works, no one will respect his incredible achievement during the 2006 Tour. It's a shame.

Yes, it's just a race, but enough people give it meaning for it to have meaning for a lot of people.

with all due respect. The politics of international sport have serious implications for a great many people, whether Americans care to believe that or not. The way this story has played out is utterly ridiculous. It's obscene what the media has done to Landis over the past two weeks. Why is it that we can get outraged when the media lies about Shrub, but not about a bike racer?

I know it was reported that he tested positive, but I haven't been following his story very closely. Same principles should apply, though.

He made a pointed political statement to that effect right after his win when the press throngs asked him if that was Bush calling on his ringing cell phone.

He said he hoped not, because he would hang up on him. He said that to the world. I say good on him for it, too.

Could he have been using it all along and masking it with epitestosterone, and then failed to mask it properly between 16 and 17? Most athletes caught doping--heck, most employees failing any drug test--have successfully passed these tests before, either through timing or masking, and just screwed up on the one they were caught on.

I don't know how it all works, so that's just a suggestion.

and if true, then shame on him and he should be stripped of the title. I just think people should ask the questions, rather than just point the finger and say he's guilty.

I have to see a lot of details before I'm convinced. I'm still not sure OJ's guilty.

:thumbsdown: If I were innocent, I'd be finding the bums if it took me every day of the rest of my life....Landis, I don't know.

Is anyone suggesting it could somehow be introduced into his system without his knowledge? It's a bit of a stretch, but we all remember the attack on Nancy Kerrigan by an overzealously, ambitiously crazy opponent.

Now I'm venturing into tinfoil-hat land.

When Johnson tested positive in 88, he did all the same things Landis has done, swearing he didn't do it, offering several explanations in a short time, vowing to clear his name. In the end he finally admitted it, but claimed he had to take them to compete, since everyone else was taking them. Since then, most of the other racers that day have failed tests at some point, and a couple of trainers have admitted that most racers were on steroids.

What eventually came out was that every athlete had to take the steroids to compete, and their trainers all knew every trick to mask the results. Those who got caught screwed up in the masking somehow, although Johnson's trainer still swears that the Olympic committee fixed the results. He swears that there is no way his masking technique failed, basically, because it worked for everyone else.

So, either Landis is innocent and this is sabotage, or Landis is guilty and he's a damn lying cheat, or the whole thing is a game that most of the cyclists play and that everyone expects them to play, so Landis and Armstrong and everyone else feels totally justified denying it because that's part of the game they all understand. Or, as you imply, and as Johnson's trainer implied and Johnson's test, someone wanted Landis disqualified and rigged the tests, knowing that Landis and everybody else was guilty anyway so he could never prove his innocence. If the latter is the case, it would explain Landis's reactions--he's outraged because he knows his masking would have prevented the positive read as it does for everyone else, so he knows they rigged the results. If that's the case, though, he's screwed. There's no way to defend against that.

So, in short, I just don't know what's going on.

L'Equipe continues to accuse Armstrong of doping. Greg LeMond was accused several times during his Tour runs.

I'm with you, though. I have no clue as to what's going on. It seems that there's much more to this story than there appears to be, though.

But basically, we have a police department that was busted a few years later for planting and falsifying evidence to get convictions, we have DNA blood tests that were completely disproven by the man who invented the technique used to test the DNA, and we have a key witness forced to admit he had committed perjury, and who also bragged at other times that he planted evidence to get convictions in unspecified cases. Take away the blood samples (which science did) and you have a case shaky to the point of absurdity. The only reason it seems so solid is because the media makes it seem that way. Although the introduction of the shoe evidence in the civil case did finally provide a link between the murder and OJ that wasn't filtered through the questionable police department. That's the most solid evidence against him, though it's not incontrovertible. At worst, it proves he was there at some point.

In short, you had a racist cop who believed at once that OJ had done it and could have easily planted most of the evidence that was found.

As for him trying to find the bums for the rest of his life--have you ever been in that situation? My best friend believes his father was murdered. He looked into it as much as he could, but after a point all he could do was fume about it. And that point came pretty quickly, actually--there was no evidence he could find.

I don't know if OJ did it or not, but it's a lot less certain than people seem to believe. If you take the firm evidence that OJ killed his wife, and the firm evidence that OSwald killed JFK, the evidence for Oswald killing JFK would be infinitely stronger. And yet most people here seem to believe exactly the opposite. In fact, if anyone discovers this post, they will accuse me of being stupid, bad with evidence, a dupe of the man, and just about every other insult they can think of (For the record, I have an MA in history, and the coursework necessary for a PhD, as well as three and a half years of coursework in engineering before switching my major, so I'm quite comfortable with my understanding of evidentiary proof) because I've even suggested it.

It's not up to the testing facility to consider every possible scenario that may play in Landis' favor. Their job
is to do the test and report the results. It's then up to the governing body to make a decision.

It's entirely possible that there was foul play involved that was aimed at Landis. The problem is that one needs to
go deep into tinfoil territory to explore such roads, while the obvious answer is that Landis cheated and got caught.
It's entirely possible that he surrounded himself with doctors who DIDN'T have half a brain and screwed up.

That's the thing about cheating - you can get away with it until you get caught. Then, the whole facade comes crashing
down.

On edit: I don't for a second believe that this was a set up to take down an improbable American winner. The Tour could have
guaranteed a non-American winner by not disqualifying all of those top-rated guys only days before the race, disqualified
for doping.

the lab has the most questions to answer. The rush to leak the story to the press is waaayyy too suspicious for me. Where was UCI to stop the leak? Is this lab going to be sanctioned at all for leaking the story? Who is the lab director? There is SO MUCH MONEY involved here that it's hard for me not to ignore basic questions like these.

before everyone passes judgement. Testosterone makes no sense at that stage of the tour. Why risk everything on a drug that isn't even beneficial? Somethings wrong with the whole story.

Is that a real investigation is probably never going to happen. UCI can't risk it, and for Landis, everyone already thinks he's guilty. It's so easy to accuse an athlete of doping, and that stain never goes away. There are plenty of bad guys in professional sports who dope, and they should be villified. My gut tells me that Landis is NOT one of them.

guilty or not.

The T/E ratio is fairly stable. Prior to the positive test, he was tested multiple times and found to be below the threshold of 4:1.

What could possibly explain it suddenly spiking to 11:1, just when he needed a boost? For that to occur naturally, his testes would have to suddenly increase production of testosterone by nearly 300 percent, something that seems highly unlikely and appears to be medically impossible.

You DO NOT get an immediate, short-term boost with testosterone. Testosterone is a cumulative hormone. It doesn't improve performance in the short term. If he was going to dope, it makes much more sense from a performance standpoint to use EPO or a blood transfusion or any other substance that gives you a short-term edge.

It could also be he was cheating all along and for some reason his masking failed on that test.

The point is, if it is medically impossible for this to have happened naturally, then the HAS to be some external cause. So either someone cheated by "spiking" his test, or he cheated to win the race. I am leaning toward the latter.

If it's an illegal substance, then Landis shouldn't have it in his system. It's likely Mr. Landis took it not knowing its full potential to be beneficial or harmful. It's also unlikely Mr. Landis merely took synthetic testosterone by itself - synthetic testosterone is also a by-product of the metabolism of other drugs.

contaminate the sample with some performance enhancing substance everyone could agree would help a bicyclist?

In other words, if you're saying testosterone doesn't help.....why would the "contaminator" use that instead of something else?

Testosterone has a much bigger recognition factor than EPO. I'm getting up to my neck in the dark world of international cycling conspiracy now. Someone throw me a rope over here so I can hang myself with it.

I'm less interested in an investigation of cycling than I am in an investigation of the lab.

benefit of the doubt, because who knows what goes on in the lab.

I'm just saying that if this were to go to court, one of the first things the lawyers representing the Tour would argue is what I said in my previous post.

If you're going to taint, seems you'd taint with a performance enhancement that is indisputable.

There are so many unanswered questions about this, but the guy is already toast thanks to the MSM. It's his fault for getting interested and excelling at a sport that the American public could care less about (by and large).

I need to take a walk around the block or something. Must.Chill.Out.

that traces of of synthetic "testosterone" were found in his samples. Could it have been by accident? What purpose could there be for synthetic testosterone to be in Landis' system, other than to enhance his abilities? Don't know. Just asking.

The thing is, testosterone (synthetic and natural) has a cumulative effect. It repair muscle tissue after exercise over the long-term. There is no short-term benefit (like recovering from his cracking on Stage 16) from testosterone. There are, however, plenty of ways to get a short-term recovery. So why not those, if he was going to dope? http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=2532029

This article has a bit from one of the members of the World Anti-Doping Agency, a far more experienced and knowlegeble source than I, asking these questions.

Which, he says, could have given him a boost in testosterone. The scientists disagree.

In my own experience with booze (far too much and too long) the recupurative effects were not those that generally incited better performance in any aspect.

The only thing fishy about this is Landis' rather lame excuses.

Not the brightest training tactic (IMHO), but hey, if it works for him. I've seen his defenses, and they seem (to me, anyway) not as "defensive" as you'd expect from someone who knew he was lying. They were more explanatory, and not nearly as aggressive as I recall Ben Johnson being.

NPR : Q&A: Understanding the Doping Allegations

Ok so you would be more likely to take one of these other substances or a have a blood transfusion if you wanted a boost mid-race. What if Landis did indeed have a blood transfusion, but somehow the blood he was given had an abnormally high testosterone level?

One thing I found about this is that the while an elevated T/E ratio (what they test for) is not necessarily impossible, one thing that is scientifically proven is that the T/E ratio is fairly stable in a given individual. So you may have a high ratio, but you would ALWAYS have a high ratio. It wouldnt just spike up violently without some external cause.

So the BEST evidence for doping is the fact that he passed his previous tests. This means that he either had testosterone injected, or he failed to take a masking agent that previously was keeping his ratio down.

On edit: look at it this way his previous test showed his T/E ratio to be below 4:1, the next showed it to be as high as 11:1. For this to occur naturally, it would mean his testes would have had to increase production of testosterone by nearly 300 percent, just when he needed it the most. That doesn't sound likely to me, and it also seems to be medically impossible.

Why inject testosterone after he cracked on Stage 16 if his purpose was to win 17? Why all of a sudden fail to take epitestosterone (the masking agent)if he'd been hiding it all along?

As far as the transfused blood theory, the general practice of the riders who were busted in the pre-Tour sting was to use their own blood. If Landis followed suit, the blood wouldn't have increased his doped levels because it was in line with what was already there. If he used someone else's blood that was tainted, then he's way dumber than anyone gave him credit for.

He simply used his own blood that was taken when his T/E ratio was too high from doping during training, and they didnt realise it. As for why he might suddenly forget to take a masking agent after he had just broken on stage 16, I think the answer is right there.

The point is, how can a ratio that has been scientifically proven to be fairly stable, no matter how high it is in relation to other people, suddenly nearly triple? We are not talking about a small spike but a large increase over baseline levels, and just when he put on his best performance.

Sure it could all be a coincidence coupled with someone "planting" the evidence, but really, is that any more likely than a professional athlete cheating? Especially in a sport where cheating has been rife?

Riders are tested year-round. The UCI is notorious for stopping by a rider's house for a sample. Armstrong was randomly tested 31 times before his last Tour ever started.

IMHO, the huge spike in the T/E level is what vindicates him. I don't think anyone involved with cycling, even on a spectator level, would think (and this is solely on a performance-based level) that testosterone would be a good idea after stage 16. Heck, an IV bag of fluid would have helped him more than testosterone would have, in the short-term.

Taken alone, the positive test result looks very very bad, I'll freely admit that. But the circumstances surrounding the result, and the aftermath of the leak, the piss-poor record of securing these samples, and UCI internal politics (not to mention the giant piles of money involved) make this a perfect storm lined up against Landis.

31 tests and all of them the ratio was below 4:1 and suddenly for no medically valid reason the ratio skyrockets 300 percent.

You seem to think that T/E is a level - its not a level as in how much of something there is, it is a ratio, comparing the relative amounts of two somethings. He could have had the exact same amounts of testosterone the whole time, but, after forgetting to take the masking agent, the ratio would suddenly increase.

That is how most drug cheats are caught. Something goes wrong with their attempts to mask the cheating.

So this wouldnt be a case of suddenly taking testosterone, for no viable reason, it would be a case of forgetting to take a masking agent when he needed to, or something going wrong during that procedure. Either way, it is a scientific fact that T/E ratios are fairly stable, and a massive change like this is not naturally possible.

to be competitive. In bodybuilding, they have two categories: all natural, and the obviously enahanced.

Perhaps that's what they should do with the tour: have one group of riders that are free to take whatever performance enhancers they please, and the "natural" group. Set-up two different record books.

Either that, or simply legalize the doping accross the board. It will never stop and the dopers generally stay ahead of the bladder cops.

FWIW, IMHO Landis doped. But believe as you will, at least we still aren't getting locked up for thoughtcrime.

The weightlifter who pulled his arms off? Now THAT'S comedy!

Why should he admit to something he didn't do? It's quite apparent, given the repeated leaks of test results, that the anti-doping authorities have no regard for their own rules.

If the consequences of a doping violation are so dire, then the athletes have every right to demand and fight for a fair and scientifically sound process. Accountability is a two-way street, and the anti-doping authorites, to date, have not held up their end of the bargain.

That was the whole point of starting this thread. Thank you!!!

... in one of your assertions. Yes, testosterone has no "short term" PHYSICAL effects, but it ABSOLUTELY DOES have short term mental effects. Aggressiveness, competitiveness and the like are felt immediately.

Now, there are lots of different forms of drugs that are similar to testosterone, and from what I've read these are the kinds of drugs he's tested positive for. Real testoesterone has to be injected, and it takes some time before even entering the bloodstream in amounts that will do anything mental or physical. The synthetic drugs are sometimes oral and they can have near immediate effect.

As I've said over and over, it is my firm belief that in pro sports of all kinds, these drugs are used by MOST of the players. You are talking multi-million dollar careers, and risks have to be taken. There are ways to make the tests less effective, and that's how the athletes cope.

they are sick and tired of Americans coming in there and winning it. A win by a European rider means Mega $ for all those involved (mainly people who want to peddle stuff to the Euro market, excuse the pun). That is more effectively done with a Euro rider that the euro public identifies with. Armstrong is pally pal with GW, wonder how that goes over with the Euro public? With his departure I'm sure many Euro's thought things would change. After this Landis thing, I suspect there will NEVER be another American rider to win the Tour de France.

Determination can be the cover for doping and vice versa, there are simply to many variables when bureaucracy(humans) is brought into the mix. The tests are a tool as much as the substances themselves are. And tools will be used, that's the only safe bet.

How about a no rules mad max bike race, may the most doped win.

mad max style? would they get to use weapons? that might be worth setting the TiVo for. even NBC would cover that!

would they get to use weapons? yes, that scene from "Breaking Away" comes to mind.