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2006 Tour de France - Floyd Landis

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StadiumDorm said:
All it says is that he tested positive for high levels of steroids. It doesn't appear to even allege that the high level is in and of itself against the rules. He was suffering from some severe pain, so it's possible that something he took could have caused it.

Let's just wait until the facts come out, or at least until we hear from Landis himself.
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No it does not say anything about steriods. It just says that his Testosterone levels were above normal ranges. If he can prove that this a normal condition for him then there is nothing wrong. If not he is fucked. This has happened before and riders have proved that it is a normal condition so no penalty.

I will say that I never believed that an athlete could recover and perform like he did after a bonk like that. It just was not possible. I have bonked like that and could not hardly wak the next day much less be better than the rest of the field combined.
 
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FCB, Tell me that you did not shake your head and think to yourself how the fuck did he DO that?
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I for one have been holding my breath since the finish of that stage. This was the obvious other shoe. I wanted so badly for it to be real. Still holding out hope.
 
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Oh8ch said:
I for one have been holding my breath since the finish of that stage. This was the obvious other shoe. I wanted so badly for it to be real. Still holding out hope.
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I have a lot of coaches e-mailing me saying that his B test is low. I am not sure that this will stick. According to ESPN (yea I know) most of the positive test challenges for testostrone are won by the athlete. He can also challenge the finding with a hair sample I believe. More to follow whan I hear about them...
 
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Just listened to the cycling analyst on ESPN. He mentioned, as Folanator said, that every Olympic athlete who tested positive like this has challenged the test in court and won. Landis didn't have a high level of testosterone (he actually had a low level of testosterone), but he had a high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone.

Of course, whether this sticks or not may not matter. It's made the news, so his name will probably forever be tarnished.
 
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The acceptable ratio was recently lowered from 6:1 to 4:1. Landis is quoted in an SI interview wondering if the sample was tainted by cortisone shots (for his hip) or by thyroid medication.

foxsports

Landis denies cheating, but may lose Tour title

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=440 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD>Associated Press
<!-- Meta Tag For Search --><!-- meta name="author" content=""--><!-- meta name="source" content="AP"--><!-- meta name="eventId" content=""--><!-- meta name="contentTypeCode" content="1"--><!-- meta name="editorContentCode" content="1"--><!-- meta name="blurb" content="Just four days ago, Floyd Landis was standing on the victory podium on the Champs-Elysees. But his improbable Tour de France win was called into question Thursday by a positive test for high levels of testosterone. Landis' Phonak team has suspended him pending the results of a backup test."--><!-- meta name="modDate" content="July 27, 2006 21:57:03 GMT"-->Posted: 2 minutes ago<SCRIPT> // front-end hack to remove postedTime from Rumors page until a better way can be determined if (document.URL.indexOf("/name/FS/rumors") != -1) document.getElementById("postedTime").style.display = 'none'; </SCRIPT> </TD><TD width=10> </TD><TD align=right><!--this is for sponsorships or brandings--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><!-- workingCategoryId: 4980--></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE class=bdy cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=770 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD height=5></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=bdy cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=770 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=10></TD><TD width=440><!-- search:</noindex> --><SCRIPT> if(fanid.length > 0 && typeof(nflDefaultLeague)!= "undefined") { leagueId = nflDefaultLeague; //find teamId of default league (if exists) for(var i=0; i < teamsInfo.length; i++){ if(teamsInfo[4] == leagueId){ defaultTeamId = teamsInfo[0]; } } var fantasyLeaguePlayerJsPath = 'http://msn.foxsports.com' + '/nugget/200002_' + leagueId + '|||' + fanid; } </SCRIPT>LONDON (AP) - Tainted at the start, the Tour de France may have been tainted at the finish, too.
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Floyd Landis' stunning Tour de France victory was thrown into question Thursday when his team said he tested positive for high testosterone levels during stage 17, when the 30-year-old American champion began his stunning comeback with a gritty charge into the Alps.

But Landis denied cheating in an interview with Sports Illustrated on Thursday.

"No, c'mon man," Landis responded to a reporter's question about whether he used any banned testosterone.

The Phonak team suspended Landis, pending results of the backup "B" sample of his drug test. If Landis is found guilty of doping, he could be stripped of the Tour title, and Spain's Oscar Pereiro would become champion.

It wasn't immediately known when the backup sample will be tested.
But even Landis told SI he "can't be hopeful" that the "B" sample will be any different than positive "A" result. "I'm a realist," he told SI.

Landis told SI he wonders whether the cortisone shots he's been taking for his badly injured right hip might have skewed the test, or maybe the thyroid hormones he's been taking to treat a thyroid condition might have had an effect.

Arlene Landis told AP her son called Thursday from Europe and told her he had not done anything wrong.

"He said, 'There's no way,"' she said in an interview with The Associated Press at her home in Farmersville, Pa. "I really believe him. I don't think he did anything wrong."

Second-place finisher Pereiro said he was in no mood to celebrate.
"Should I win the Tour now it would feel like an academic victory," Pereiro told The Associated Press at his home in Vigo, Spain. "The way to celebrate a win is in Paris, otherwise it's just a bureaucratic win."

The Swiss-based Phonak team said it was notified by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on Wednesday that Landis' sample showed "an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" when he was tested after stage 17 of the race last Thursday.

"The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result," the Phonak statement said.

The 30-year-old Landis made a remarkable comeback in that Alpine stage, racing far ahead of the field for a solo win that moved him from 11th to third in the overall standings. He regained the leader's yellow jersey two days later.

Landis rode the Tour with a degenerative hip condition that he has said will require surgery in the coming weeks or months.

Phonak's statement came a day after the UCI, cycling's world governing body, said an unidentified rider had failed a drug test during the Tour.
Phonak said Landis would ask for an analysis of his backup sample "to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake."

Phonak manager John Lelangue said the team would ask for the second sample to be analyzed in the next few days.

"He will be fighting ... waiting for the B analysis and then proving to everyone that this can be natural," Lelangue said in a telephone interview.

Arlene Landis said it could take two weeks for the results of the backup test to be made public.

"Of course he wasn't happy about it, but they're spoiling everything he's supposed to be doing right now," she said. "Why couldn't they take care of this before they pronounced him the winner? Lance (Armstrong) went through this too. Somebody doesn't want him to win."
"Why do they put you through two weeks of misery and spoil your crown? My opinion is when he comes on top of this everyone will think so much more of him. So that's what valleys are for, right?"

If the second sample confirms the initial finding, Phonak said Landis will be fired.

USA Cycling spokesman Andy Lee said that organization could not comment on Landis.

"Because it's an anti-doping matter, it's USA Cycling's policy not to comment on that subject out of respect for the process and Floyd's rights," Lee said. "Right now, we have to let the process proceed and we can't comment on it."

Carla O'Connell, publications and communications director for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said: "I'll make this very brief: No comment."

UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani said Landis was notified of the test Wednesday morning. He said the cycling body doesn't require analysis of the "B" sample, but that Landis requested it.

"We are confident in the first (test)," Carpani said. "For us, the first one is already good."

"It is obviously distressing," Tour director Christian Prudhomme said at a Paris news conference, stressing the backup test still must be done. Prudhomme said it would be up to the UCI to determine penalties if Landis is found guilty of doping.

Under World Anti-Doping Agency regulations, a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone greater than 4:1 is considered a positive result and subject to investigation. The threshold was recently lowered from 6:1. The most likely natural ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in humans is 1:1.
Testosterone is included as an anabolic steroid on WADA's list of banned substances, and its use can be punished by a two-year ban.

Landis wrapped up his Tour de France win on Sunday, keeping the title in U.S. hands for the eighth straight year. Lance Armstrong, long dogged by doping whispers and allegations, won the previous seven. Armstrong never has tested positive for drugs and vehemently has denied doping.
On Thursday, Armstrong was riding in RAGBRAI, an annual bike ride across Iowa that attracts thousands of riders.

At the first break in Sully, Iowa, about 50 miles southeast of Des Moines, Armstrong had little to say at the Coffee Cup Cafe, where he grabbed a slice of coconut cream pie and a big glass of ice water.

When asked about Landis, Armstrong told The Associated Press: "I'm not here to talk about that."

Landis' inspiring Tour ride reminded many of fellow American Tyler Hamilton's gritty 2003 performance. Hamilton, riding for team CSC, broke his collarbone on the first day of the Tour but rode on, despite the pain, and finished fourth overall.

But, a year later, Hamilton, then riding for Phonak, tested positive for blood doping at a Spanish race and now is serving a two-year ban. He has denied blood doping.

Also Thursday, one of Germany's main television channels threatened to drop coverage of the Tour de France because of Landis' doping test. The ZDF channel demanded guarantees from the UCI and tour organizers that they will take firms steps against doping.

Speculation that Landis had tested positive spread earlier Thursday after he failed to show up for a one-day race in Denmark on Thursday. A day earlier, he missed a scheduled event in the Netherlands.

On the eve of the Tour's start, nine riders - including pre-race favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso - were ousted, implicated in a Spanish doping investigation.

The names of Ullrich and Basso turned up on a list of 56 cyclists who allegedly had contact with Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who's at the center of the Spanish doping probe.

World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound, speaking before Landis was confirmed as the rider with the positive test, said it was amazing any cyclist would risk doping after the scandals that rocked the Tour before the start.
"Despite all the fuss prior to the race with all these riders identified and withdrawn, you still have people in that race quite willing and prepared to cheat," he told the AP by phone from Montreal. "That's a problem for cycling."
 
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This from some one with knowledge of such things.....
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Folks -

Some useful background on testosterone use by athletes and testing
used to detect it, from a 2001 New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell:
http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_08_10_a_drug.htm
****************
Through much of the eighties and nineties, most sports organizations
conducted their drug testing only at major competitions. Athletes
taking testosterone would simply do what Johnson did, and taper off
their use in the days or weeks prior to those events. So sports
authorities began randomly showing up at athletes' houses or training
sites and demanding urine samples. To this, dopers responded by taking
extra doses of epitestosterone with their testosterone, so their T/E
would remain in balance. Testers, in turn, began treating elevated
epitestosterone levels as suspicious, too. But that still left
athletes with the claim that they were among the few with naturally
elevated testosterone. Testers, then, were forced to take multiple
urine samples, measuring an athlete's T/E ratio over several weeks.
Someone with a naturally elevated T/E ratio will have fairly
consistent ratios from week to week. Someone who is doping will have
telltale spikes--times immediately after taking shots or pills when
the level of the hormone in his blood soars. Did all these precautions
mean that cheating stopped? Of course not. Athletes have now switched
from injection to transdermal testosterone patches, which administer a
continuous low-level dose of the hormone, smoothing over the old,
incriminating spikes. The patch has another advantage: once you take
it off, your testosterone level will drop rapidly, returning to
normal, depending on the dose and the person, in as little as an hour.
"It's the peaks that get you caught," says Don Catlin, who runs the
U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory. "If you took a pill this
morning and an unannounced test comes this afternoon, you'd better
have a bottle of epitestosterone handy. But, if you are on the patch
and you know your own pharmacokinetics, all you have to do is pull it
off." In other words, if you know how long it takes for you to get
back under the legal limit and successfully stall the test for that
period, you can probably pass the test. And if you don't want to take
that chance, you can just keep your testosterone below 6:1, which, by
the way, still provides a whopping performance benefit. "The bottom
line is that only careless and stupid people ever get caught in drug
tests," Charles Yesalis says. "The lite athletes can hire top medical
and scientific people to make sure nothing bad happens, and you can't
catch them."
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Dumbfounded Landis denies cheating during Tour


Like everyone in the sports world, Floyd Landis spent Thursday trying to make sense of Thursday's news, that he tested positive for high testosterone during the Tour de France. Maybe it was the medicine he needs for his thyroid disease. Maybe it was the cortisone he took for his chronically injured hip, which is due to be replaced.

Or maybe, the Tour de France winning rider speculated, it was the Jack Daniel's he drank the night before his historic Stage 17, though that would seem a more likely excuse from George Jones than a world-class athlete.
Point is, he says he doesn't have any more idea than you do. Whatever caused the suspicious "A" sample -- a "B" sample will be tested soon, in order to confirm -- Landis insisted he has never used any performance-enhancing drugs.

"I had everything I could have ever possibly hoped for and dreamed of for the last 10 years," he said in a conference call from an undisclosed location in Europe on Thursday, "and at the exact moment that I was told, every single scenario went through my head. There was no way for me to be able to tell myself that this wasn't going to be a disaster, whether I come out of this proving I am innocent.

"No matter what happens next, I knew it was going to be a long road. My immediate reaction was from a very, very high to a very low."

This started after his disastrous Stage 16, where he went from controlling the race to a distant 11th. He thought it was all over, so instead of getting a massage and readying himself for the next day, he and some teammates went to a bar down the street. After one beer, they were mobbed, so they returned to a hotel room, where someone produced a bottle of Jack Daniel's, which has made many a good night go bad.

The next morning, Landis went out and smoked the field, winning the stage and setting up his eventual win. Everything was great, until Wednesday, when his team received a fax informing them of the test result. Landis was quick to point out that it wasn't a failed test.

"I know now that it has not been called a positive test," he said. "It's been called an abnormal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio, which needs to be explained one way or the other, either by some outside source of testosterone or by a physiological change of some sort."

Now the Landis camp must do just that. Both the cyclist and his doctor said there were reasonable explanations, up to, and including, Tennessee sippin' whiskey. Landis himself acknowledged the strangeness of it all, saying he had a team of experts working to find out why the ratio was out of whack.


"We're consulting with a number of the world's experts so we don't speculate," said Dr. Brent Kay, Landis' physician. "Particularly since the testing process isn't complete. … We're getting the experts involved."

In a separate conference call, seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, who is on the annual RAGBRAI bike ride across Iowa, urged caution.

"I will say I don't know much about Floyd's case, so I don't want to comment much," Armstrong said. "I know we have a suspicious "A" sample and we're waiting on a "B" sample to be confirmed. Until that happens, I won't have anything to say."

As everyone waits for that to happen, no one is suffering more than Landis. He said his first reaction upon hearing the news was to start drinking. Even as he consults experts and insists on his innocence, he seems to understand that his greatest triumph has been, at the very least, irreparably dulled.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it's ever gonna go away," he said. "From what I've seen in the news and the headlines, it appears that this is a bigger story than winning the Tour. That's gonna be hard to go away. I think there is a good possibility I can clear my name. That's what I want to do. That's my objective now. Regardless of whether that happens or not, I don't know this will ever really go away."

For now, all Landis can do is come home from Europe and see where he stands. Less than a week ago, he was rolling in triumph down the Champs-Elysées. Most people on the continent knew his name. He was celebrated across his home country. Now, he's just hoping to make it back without being recognized.
"I have to figure out a way to get home and get to the airport and stay anonymous," he said.
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=2531960
 
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