More on Landis

cycling, doping, Floyd Landis, Tour de France | UltraRob | Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 9:36 am

Yesterday I posted that I thought pretty much everybody in pro cycling is doping in some form. This doesn’t mean I think they’re all using EPO, steroids, or blood doping. There’s a wide range of ways to dope from the hard core stuff to some pretty innocent ways. It might be more accurate to say they take banned substances instead of calling it doping. Things like caffeine and Sudafed have only recently been removed from the banned list.

I really have a hard time believing that Floyd Landis took anything before stage 17 of the Tour de France to increase his testosterone. He would have known he would be tested if he won the stage. Unlike some other forms of doping, testosterone is easily detected and fairly well understood. Also testosterone is something that needs to be taken over time in order to gain a performance boost. Getting an injection the night before stage 17 wouldn’t have allowed him to have the incredible comeback that he did.

I think that Floyd is telling the truth when he says he didn’t dope. I think Floyd is one of the least likely in the peloton to dope and even if he did it wouldn’t have been this way. He’s too smart and has too good of doctors. There are natural ways this could have happened. A Fox News article does the best job I’ve been able to find of explaining reasons for testing positive. I’d like to know how high his testosterone/epitestosterone ratio was. Was it 4.1:1 or was it off the charts.

Unfortunately Floyd’s career and cycling in general have been damaged no matter what the result is for his B sample. If his B sample is also positive, then the final outcome will likely take months as he undergoes endocrine tests to prove that he naturally has high testosterone levels.

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