Landis Arbitration Recap

I normally don't link to anything found at the Los Angeles Times, because I find even political bias in sports columns, but today's story by Michael A. Hiltzik, in which he recounts the Landis arbitration proceedings, is a great read, and does not gloss over any pertinent details. I followed the hearing, almost live, by following the extemporaneous blog posts over at TBV, so I found no factual inconsistencies with the testimony. I've been quite annoyed with most coverage, since they can't even get the fact straight that Landis would not be the first Tour winner to be stripped of his title if he is found to be guilty of doping. To paraphrase an unemployed gasbag: "Maurice Garin. Google it."

Key facts about the incompetence at the Paris lab, LNDD, emerged from the testimony of the lab techs. The test results were confirmed as odd, or in error, by the USADA's own witnesses, and described as indecipherable by Landis' expert witnesses. And WADA's cover your ass attitude was exposed as written policy.

• LNDD uses only one metabolite to look for excess testosterone, when there are four, and most WADA accredited labs use three, such as the labs at UCLA and in Montreal. WADA guidelines allow for the use of only one metabolite. The metabolite examined, shorthanded as 5A, was outside the acceptable delta value of minus 3, at minus 6. It was this huge number that convinced most WADA officials, despite the lax procedures and protocols at LNDD, that it had to be a result of doping.
• LNDD never calibrated its testing machinery accurately. So badly was the calibration done, that LNDD identified a compound that was not in the specimens.
• Another of the four metabolites from testosterone found in urine, 5B, has a close statistical correlation with 5A, and has never been found with a delta value greater than 2 from the 5A value, in any published paper, even by those published by some USADA witnesses. In Landis' sample, the peak identified as 5B was at 4 units difference. The test was in obvious error from known science.
• So subjective were the LNDD testing procedures that the techs could not reproduce their results for observers.
• WADA ethics codes do not allow officials to testify on behalf of athletes suspected of doping or to dispute other labs' results.

These facts presented in testimony look like a slam dunk for Landis, but in the anti-doping proceedings, the lab tests are taken as valid, a priori, and the defense must show a violation occurred to invalidate the test. However, the testing at LNDD is so sloppy, it may work in USADA's favor, because Landis may not be able to prove a violation took place. With how sloppy the lab work was, there actually might have been excess testosterone in the sample. This is the USADA's position. The best Landis can do, is to convince the arbiters that the lab work is so sloppy, the tests have to be interpreted as inconclusive, and the violation comes from declaring an inconclusive test a positive. Landis can't even use the false positive argument, because the same lab, the same uncalibrated equipment, and the same tech, tested his other B samples from the Tour, and found excess delta values in some of them. For Landis, it just meant more inconclusive tests. For the USADA, it provides some corroboration for the doping interpretation. I don't know if Landis doped, but as far back as August last year, I've been saying that the tests results don't know either.

French Lab Hoses Landis, Again!

And this time, the USADA is complicit with the mishandled procedures. As part of the arbitration process in deciding whether Floyd Landis needs to be sanctioned for doping in last year's Tour de France, the USADA asked for the remaining B samples to be tested. Landis' team had asked for another lab to do the testing other than the French lab that allegedly mishandled the doping tests last year and did leak the results to L'Equipe. Well, the same lab got to do the tests anyway, and without the rider's representative present to observe parts of testing, and even all of the testing for two of the samples. The USADA officials barred the rep from watching critical phases of the procedures, and then went home early, so that the French lab would not let the Landis observer even inside the building to watch the testing of those two remaining samples. Why did the testing go ahead? This is a blatant oversight of the athlete's rights to observe B sample testing, perhaps even malicious.

Now that the B samples have been used up, there is nothing left to test, which leads the Landis side to speculate that this latest round of testing was all a ruse set up by the anti-doping agencies to willfully destroy evidence. That may be a little far-fetched, but what is true, is that the strange events surrounding the testing, with barring the presence of the athlete's observer and the leaked results of the test to the same newspaper, cast more doubt on what happened to Landis, and reinforce old doubts. And worse, there is no more physical evidence of Landis' guilt, or innocence, of the doping allegations. As I predicted last year, I believe all the problems with the technicalities of the testing procedures would exonerate Landis by showing the tests to be inconclusive. This latest go-round does nothing to change that view. However, being declared innocent through bureaucratic incompetency will not clear the taint of wrong-doing. A clear guilty verdict would have been a much better outcome, for the sport of cycling. It would have been better to amputate with one clean cut, and move on to sanctions, than to suffer the thousand paper cuts of innuendo and intrigue.

Landis Admits Systematic Doping

As one who followed closely the aftermath of the doping scandal which claimed the title of the 2006 Tour de France, I always believed Floyd Landis when he said that he did not take exogenous testosterone on the days he tested positive. I based that belief, at first, on Landis' strong denials of doping, and then later on the expert testimony during his appeal to USADA, that his positive result at the former LNDD in France would have been interpreted as inconclusive or negative at the testing labs at UCLA, Montreal, and Switzerland. The three member panel agreed with that statement, but only one of them thought that unfairness was enough to strike down the doping conviction. Even with today's bombshells from Landis admitting to participating in a full-blown doping regimen, and pointing his fingers at everyone else, it doesn't change that fact. In the story at ESPN, Landis still denies having exogenous testosterone in his system during stage 17 of the Tour, even though he may have had EPO and HGH, so his strong denials came from being caught doping for the wrong substance. So, while technically "innocent" of the doping charge he tried to overturn, he was definitely not racing "clean."

Does this change my opinion of Landis from four years ago? Not much, since his performances after his doping ban ended have not shown him to have the same racing quality that he had before the doping saga began. If he came back, and was as strong as ever, like a Vinokourov, that may have bolstered his story, but he did not. And now it seems that bitterness of not being able to reclaim that past fitness and strength has fueled these recent actions to admit that he was riding in the mud and drag as many people down with him. One thing I remember back in 2008, while Landis was in the middle of all his legal wrangling, was his comment disparaging one of the new American teams trying to establish an anti-doping image for the sponsors who had fled the sport of cycling after 2007: Team High Road, the former Deutsche Telekom team of Jan Ulrich, Andreas Kloeden, and Aleksandr Vinokourov, and current HTC-Columbia Team of Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel. Landis called them "Team High Horse," which always seemed mean-spirited for someone proclaiming that he was innocent of doping violations and had always ridden clean. Now I know where that animus was coming from: guilt.

Landis Legal Matters

It's all up to the lawyers now, and that's even true for those that are not involved in the Landis doping scandal. The Belgian Team Director for Quick Step wants to sue Floyd Landis "for what he is now doing to cycling." Patrick Lefevere continues, showing his obvious disdain of Americans, "Why not? Why not take the American approach of dealing with things and apply it here?" And offers his personal reaction to Landis: "I feel like throwing up when I hear him." Well, the daggers are really out now.

Over at VeloNews, Robert Mionske lays out the legal rules the labs, the ADA's and the Cycling Unions are supposed to follow when a positive result shows up on the A sample, and how none of them were followed in Landis' case. There's so much good stuff there, you have to read the whole thing, but here are some choice bits dealing with the head of UCI and that french lab we love so much:

Under UCI Rules, "public disclosure shall be made by the Anti-Doping Commission or the National Federation" after the B Sample tests positive. [...] Okay, that's what's supposed to happen. Now here's what actually happened: The UCI announced that an unidentified rider tested positive in the A Sample, before the B Sample had been tested. [...] [T]he announcement [...] was made in clear violation of the requirement to announce after the B Sample had been tested. Additionally, the UCI announced that Landis' A Sample tested positive for an exogenous source, again before the required B Sample test. Although the UCI Rules permit public statements and identifications statements deemed "appropriate under the circumstances," the anonymous nature of the statements raises questions about why the statements were deemed "appropriate under the circumstances."

Here's another interesting thing: In commenting on the violation of the Public Disclosure Rules, UCI President Pat McQuaid observed that "We decided to make an announcement right away because we have been criticized in the past for not doing so-particularly in the case of an important rider." Well, besides implying that he was involved in the decision to violate the UCI Rules (remember, under the Rules it's the Anti-Doping Commission that is supposed to make the disclosure), that's interesting for another reason: "Past criticism" of the UCI for following its own Rules led to an official decision to violate the Rules, which in turn violated Landis' right to due process.

Furthermore, McQuaid offered a secondary rationale for violating the Rules: "Also, we know that the French laboratory has a close connection with L'Equipe, and we did not want this news to come through the press, because we are sure they would have leaked it." That comment raises another set of violations of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules. Under UCI Rules, samples are supposed to be anonymous-the laboratory is not supposed to know which sample belongs to which rider. If the lab in question had any information that would allow it to identify the samples, that would be a clear violation of UCI Rules, and would present Landis with a golden defense opportunity. Additionally, as McQuaid observed, the French lab has a history of leaking sample results to L'Equipe; these leaks are in violation of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules and the WADA Laboratory Code of Ethics. From the standpoint of due process, one would ask why the UCI violated its own rules, given the history of this lab, rather than requesting that WADA sanction the lab for past violations of the Anti-Doping Rules, as required under the WADA International Standard for Laboratories. [Emphasis Added]

With all the due process violations against Floyd, it is very easy to see the legal proceedings in the United States get dismissed, which I wrote about earlier here. I'm actually looking forward to the testimony in open court, because the corrupt practices of the UCI, the french labs, and WADA will be brought to light.

Moment of Truth for Landis

Sometime today, or maybe tomorrow, Floyd Landis will find out the results on his B sample to determine if there was any artificial testosterone in his system.  Again, I will repeat the same points that the rest of the endurance athletics world has been stressing: steroids would have no effect on performance in one day.  Even if the results are positive, I won't believe that Landis knowingly ingested testosterone.  Again, here are some points made in many other places: he'd been tested many times before and during the tour, in competition and out, with no positive hits for the T/E ratio; the motivation to dope during this particular Tour de France would have been sorely mitigated by the intense scrutiny due to the Operacion Puerto scandal which dismissed an entire team, nine other riders, and disqualified another team because they did not have enough riders to start.  Incidently, those five riders on Astana-Wurth have been cleared of any wrongdoing.  Lance Armstrong has some choice words about the lab that did the testing on Landis' A sample:

[...] 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.  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.  [...] 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.

Others are offering more medical theories on other things that could affect the T/E ratio (Thanks to DrunkCyclist for the link).  According to Dr Simon Davis, "It has been reported that ethanol consumption can increase urinary T/E ratios by 30% - 277% in healthy individuals.  Observed changes in plasma T/E ratios can occur with the consumption of less than 2 pints of lager."  So, it really was the beer!  And we still don't know which brand name it was either.  I really do hope Floyd Landis is cleared, because if we can't trust the cyclists, or even the doping controls, these circumstances just make all of endurance sports pointless.

 

Update: Floyd Landis' legal team officially requested testing of the B sample after reviewing the full report on the results of the A sample.  No official word on the scheduling of the testing.  Team Landis expects the results of the B sample to be exactly the same as the A sample, because, they argue, that Landis' body chemistry was the origin of the high T/E ratio.

 

Update 2: Please check here for the latest thoughts on this developing situation.

 

Latest on Landis: International Agencies Have 'Agenda'

Landis has just made his first public comments since his press conference July 28th, saying that he believes, according to the AP, that "there's a conspiracy against him by cycling's governing body and that he can't properly defend himself against charges he used performance enhancing drugs during his Tour de France win."  The UCI and WADA, during this whole affair, have not followed their regulations, where the results of the doping tests have been leaked to the press before Landis had been notified.  According to Floyd, he only saw the actual A sample results "a day and a half ago" and he found out about the B sample "from reading it in the media."  According to Landis:

I've been catching a lot of grief in the press: 'Floyd has a new excuse, a new reason for what happened.' This is a situation where I'm forced to defend myself in the media. It would never have happened if UCI and WADA had followed their own rules.  There's some kind of agenda there. I just don't know what it is.

Landis also defended his teammates, saying that there was "zero chance" that someone from Phonak gave him synthetic testosterone by chance or accident.

Finally, Floyd is addressing the problems of this whole story, that the lab, the UCI, and WADA have been breaking all of their rules regarding notification of the athlete.  There might be chance that Floyd's sanctions get tossed away on technicalities like with Tyler Hamilton's hermatocrit levels during the Olympics: no B sample testing, no doping.  Team Landis had known for over a year that he would need the hip replacement surgery, even Dave Zabriskie kept it a secret, so it seems they knew how to handle the media.  What I couldn't understand was why Floyd's inner circle could hold a press conference on his necrotic hip before the story was leaked to the press, but he couldn't get a handle on the test results.  Now we're beginning to understand why.  The rest of the world heard the story, and how it was spun, even before Landis did.  As I've written before, "if we can't trust the cyclists, or even the doping controls, these circumstances just make all of endurance sports pointless."

The Legal Has Landis

45 minutes after the B sample results came out, Phonak dismissed its captain for “violating the teams internal Code of Ethics.”  Way to show some loyalty there.  They stood by Tyler Hamilton even though he tested positive for blood doping at the Olympics, got out of it because the lab froze the blood, and then he tested positive again at the Vuelta.  Landis is still the de facto winner of the Tour de France because only the UCI can sanction the pro cyclist, and only after USA Cycling completes its investigation and requests the sanction.  The Tour directors consider runner-up Oscar Pereiro the winner, as does Oscar himself.

Landis' American lawyer, Howard Jacobs, outlined his plan to attack the science behind the carbon isotope test and also the leaking done by the UCI when the results of the A sample came to light.  Jacobs was also the lawyer for Tyler Hamilton and Tim Montgomery, who both unsuccessfully fought their doping sanctions.  Montgomery never tested positive for any doping, but was caught up in the BALCO scandal.

I'm not sure where they're going to go against the isotope test.  Synthetic testosterone, which is manufactured from a plant, has a statistically higher ratio of 13C to 12C carbon than in naturally occurring testosterone.  Team Landis has always claimed that the results of the testing are from Floyd's individual body chemistry.  Where the "wiggle" room may be found is that, although the 13C/12C ratio in the synthetic testosterone lies outside a standard deviation of the endogenous isotope ratio, the metabolized forms of the synthetics (i.e. found in urine samples) are only "statistically similar."  If there is an overlap in the deviations, then the so-called fool-proof method doesn't work.  My gut may be filled with coffee and jumping all over the place, but it's also saying this is what the Landis defense is going to claim.

The legal proceedings, according to Jacobs, will take between four and six months.  It's pretty convenient that Landis' schedule has no more racing in it except for the hip replacement.  He lost a lot of appearance money in the little races the week after the tour, and even if he clears his name, the hip replacement makes him an athlete a team will have to gamble on.

Landis on Leno

At least Floyd can get a good line over Bill Maher:

At one point during the exchanges between Leno and Landis, Maher chimed in, “It seems like we’re having a giant debate about a sport no one gives a ... about. Does anyone ever watch people bicycle racing, except for the last 10 seconds?”

Landis spoke up, “He has a hard time getting guests here. Leave the guy alone.”

The crowd laughed and applauded.

Bill Maher interjecting that comment illustrates a good point about most of the sports media coverage of this whole scandal: nobody understands how tough endurance athletes are, what they have to go through, or even how they cheat. Not one national sports columnist has brought up the fact that a one time use of synthetic testosterone before a race would do an athlete no good. The sports pundits are just used to baseball and football where steroids is the dope of choice, but they display total ignorance when it comes to triathletes, long distance runners, and cyclists and how the technology and methods have gone way beyond "the cream" and "the clear." This is probably why there has been no consensus defense of Landis' innocence in American sports coverage. As for Landis, no new excuses, but he is now publicly grumbling about the integrity of the french testers: "And I’m beginning to wonder about this myself after the way the situation’s been handled, is that after the (sample) leaves my hands ... after I give them the sample, I don’t know where it goes." Floyd should ask Lance how he feels about that French lab and how well it handles anonymous urine and blood samples.

 

Updates: Patrick O'Grady over at Velonews, even though he tested positive, denies any allegation of ingesting French white wine. Maybe that's French whine.

Also, Pat McQuaid, the UCI chief, is planning a series of meetings to overhaul cycling and get the doping and drug culture out of it. Making the races and the schedules easier will not discourage doping. His idea of sanctioning the team directors too so that they have an incentive to keep their racers clean might be going in the right direction.

And Jens Voigt officially won the the Tour of Germany, after gaining time on Levi Leipheimer in the Stage 7 time trial. Levi really needs to work on those time trials. Honestly, losing 1:14 to the Boeing? Come on, ask Gerolsteiner for some extra time in a wind tunnel.

French Media Reaction and Regurgitation

The AP is reporting that the French media appears indifferent to Landis' doping scandal.  L'Equipe's editorial "steered clear of directly targeting Landis, saying only that 'cheating comes at a high price.'"  The AP seems confused as to why the French aren't turning the Tour's darkest moment into a circus.  The last time a tour winner was disqualified for cheating was in 1904 when the top 4 finishers were caught cutting corners.  No winners have ever been stripped for doping.  The answer for the "muted" response is that, at least in their eyes, Landis got caught.  The intense scrutiny on Lance Armstrong over the last seven years was because they were trying so hard to prove that he was doping.  Conspiracy theories, bullied silence, and threats of legal action on Armstrong's side were all woven together to hint, imply, and insinuate that Armstrong had to be doping to stay at the top for so long.  Now, they have a new winner, another American, and the assumption for doping is ever present.  But Landis was not as rich, careful, and cautious as Armstrong was, and did not even consider that he needed to maintain his guard.  So, Landis was caught, either because he was not careful enough in dosing his doping regimen, or because he was not careful enough in trusting the french lab to handle his tests properly and securely.  The game is over for l'Americain, time to turn their attention to someone else they can tear down.

Floyd Landis in Pasadena

photo © Michael Sampiano

Floyd Landis' book tour landed in Pasadena last night, at the Borders Bookstore on Lake. I didn't have a chance to go, but my friend Michael did, and got a few good shots of our So Cal native. Floyd stayed long enough to sign for everyone, and apparently, anything the guests brought. As you can see below, he even signed someone's Trek Madone frame. I'm not sure if BMC is still sponsoring him, but at least Floyd covered up the brand name. Heh.

photo © Michael Sampiano

Landis Loses

Floyd Landis has lost his final appeal to the doping charge from the 2006 Tour de France. Again, the judges acknowledged “less than ideal laboratory practices," but they did not affect the overall adverse analytical finding for exogenous testosterone. In addition, the three person panel chided the Landis experts for being too adversarial in their own analyses of the French lab's practices and results. Sad. Shorter version of the 58 page verdict: "the lab kinda messed up, but not too much, and you were a dick for pointing it out. Guilty!" That's enough of that. Floyd, see you next February. Now, I'm going on a bike ride.

Update: Welcome TBV readers! For past opinions and ramblings about the Floyd Landis Doping Saga, click here.

Landis Responds to Phonak Disbanding

I didn't feel like commenting on Team Phonak dissolving at the end of this season when IShares pulled out as their main sponsor, because it's just a sad epilogue to the whole Landis Doping Scandal. It wasn't really a surprise. Phonak has been plagued with doping allegations and sanctions since its inception. The latest episode with Floyd Landis just broke their back, even with all the internal rules and protocols against doping they instituted after Tyler Hamilton was disgraced. In an open letter to the team, Floyd Landis expresses his pride at being involved with the team, but also repeated his resolve to prove that he won the Tour with the help of the entire team "fairly and cleanly."

Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel team announced its roster for the Vuelta a Espana, and it's going to built around American Tom Danielson. Danielson had been riding very well at the Giro d'Italia until fever and sinus infections caused him to abandon. Let's hope he rides better in the heat instead of the rain.

Lance believes Landis

In some brief comments at his fundraiser yesterday, Lance Armstrong came out in support of Floyd Landis. In some direct quotes from Lance, whose opinion should have more weight than some paranoid neuropath, the seven time winner of the Tour de France offers some advice:

In this day and age, you’re not going to get a fair shake in the media. And the more you get out there and talk about it, I have to talk about it. The best is just to let the process play out and get out of the media. ... I would have encouraged him just to lay low. It’s obviously not a good situation for cycling. Everybody would admit that. Floyd would admit that. It’s certainly not a good situation for American cycling. But I am a fan and supporter of Floyd Landis. I believe in him.

I believe in him too. Too many things point away from intentional doping. One of the things that have come out is that Floyd's testosterone levels were on similar levels as the previous tests from the tour. It was the epitestosterone that was low which caused the positive hit on the T/E ratio test. In my scans on the literature, people are scratching their heads on how to explain an exogenous drop in epistestosterone. It's not just forgetting to take the epitestosterone to keep the T/E ratio artificially even, because there is a threshold of epistestosterone levels above which indicates using it as a masking agent. The problem is still the isotope test, which many people have always felt was circumspect because of its reliance on a statistical threshold, which any individual test could indicate semi-synthetic testosterone. Where it doesn't add up is the baseline T level matches this test, which points away from added synthetic T. All signs indicate inconclusive, not guilty, so Landis will probably be cleared on these technicalities.

Landis Update

According to the AP, the B sample results for Floyd Landis will be released on this coming Saturday.  The story quotes heavily from a New York Times story (sorry, but I will never link to the New York Times, if enough people ask, I'll explain in a post) in which leakers are saying that the T/E ratio was over 11:1, and that the isotope ratio test for determining synthetic testosterone showed a positive hit.  The lab is speeding up its usual testing schedule because the entire facility will be going on vacation for two weeks starting Friday night.  Gotta love those European vacation rules.  Landis' doctor is hoping for false positives on the A sample for both the synthetic hit and the T/E ratio hit.

According to Gary Wadler, who has been quoted before, the synthetic hit only needs to be done once:

The rules say that it is a violation, but if you can show that the athlete had no fault or no significant fault, there could be a mitigation of the sanction.  No matter how it got there, the athlete has to show how it got into his or her body.  It could have been sabotage or contaminated dietary supplements, or something else, but they have to prove how the testosterone got there.

Now, I'm not one for propagating conspiracy theories, but this all seems very suspicious that the only synthetic hit on Landis came on the stage that sealed his victory.  As Wadler has said before, it just doesn't add up.

Impressions On The Landis Verdict

After having digested the early news reports, the majority decision, the dissenting decision, and various reactions from some of the people involved, I came away with two impressions of the USADA.

(1) They're pissed at WADA. I heard a lot of relief in the voices of the American anti-doping executives that the case was decided in their favor. It seemed to me they really argued amongst themselves on whether to defend the doping violation, especially after seeing all the documentation from the former LNDD. I saw this ire especially in how they defended the isotope test, which the panel upheld the results. After every instance of sloppiness, incorrect interpretation of results, or just plain ineptness, they kept going back to how the procedures were still handled "within" ISL codes and standards. The arbitrators only had to decide each point on a "balance of probability," but with such a low threshold of what constitutes proper procedure for chain of custody, or how many metabolites should be included in a doping test, almost any result could satisfy ISL code. And the arbitrators were not happy about it. In their conclusions, they even talk about how the Landis expert witnesses came from forensic backgrounds, where assumption of guilt is not in practice, whereas in WADA labs it is. And they signal to WADA that perhaps this should not be so considering how lax the ISL protocols are, and whether this assumption of guilt has even created a culture of laziness at WADA accredited labs. So, the USADA was able to defend its perfect record against dopers, but they're pissed about doing it in this case, because of the piss-poor evidence they had to use.

Which leads to my second impression: (2) The USADA is not going to carry WADA's water anymore. The panel basically covered WADA's ass in allowing this guilty verdict, saying the substandard ISL protocols for chain of custody, calibration of testing equipment, and interpretation of results are all good enough. The USADA knows that at UCLA and Montreal, the labs would not have found a doping violation. The arbitrators had to throw out the T/E ratio test results, and then they had to bend over backwards citing ISL procedures to allow the IRMS results as valid. The USADA does not want to defend a bad test again. The arbitrators in the majority decision recused themselves from finding ISL violations, because they did not want to get into that sticky business, even though several were obvious. I knew that the majority arbitrators were in pure face-saving mode when they discounted almost all the testimony of the guy who invented the machine that runs the carbon isotope test. You have the guy who made the machine telling the court that the French lab techs were doing it wrong, and they don't believe him? No, it was because the ISL protocols allowed such shoddy work. It is unprecedented that an arbitration panel would criticize a WADA-accredited lab, and the ISL protocols, but they did it in this case. This is a big signal to WADA, get your act together, because we're not saving your ass again.

This open rebuke of WADA by the panel is probably why Dick Pound has not been noising off as he usually does. We've heard from the Tour Director, Oscar Pereiro, the UCI director, the old Phonak coach, even the french lab director whining about how bad he looks, but not Dick Pound, who is usually first in crowing about guilty dopers. Who knows what other national anti-doping execs have been saying to him off the record? I can bet that it has not been pretty. Everyone talks about cleaning up cycling, but with the larger volume of tests that need to be done to get there, they need to clean up the ISL protocols too, otherwise more innocent athletes are going to get caught up in an indiscriminatory net. I hope Floyd Landis appeals to the CAS, because this time, there won't be the presumed 2-1 vote that there was at the beginning.

One last thing: I always wondered why Dick Pound seemed angry at the USADA for clearing American athletes of international doping violations more often than not. He attributed it to some nationalistic attitude. I think the Landis case shows the level of evidence the USADA usually had to work with, and why they defended only a few of those positive doping violations.

Vino at the Vuelta

Finally, some good news for Alexandre Vinokourov at a Grand Tour as he won the Vuelta a España on Sunday. Of course, living in America, I did not see a lick of TV coverage, but that's a rant for another day. If it weren't for the Operacion Puerto investigation, and the poor way it has been handled so far, Vinokourov, and his entire team, would have been able to compete in the Tour de France. Five of his Astana-Wurth team mates were implicated in the spanish doping investigation, which left Vino's team without enough riders to compete, so he was out too. Then those five team members were cleared the week after the Tour de France ended. The Tour, as it was, was exciting anyway, because it seemed nobody wanted to win it, until the final week with Floyd Landis' gutsy, and perhaps tainted, performances in the alpine stages. But what if Vino were in the mix? The Kazakh is fearless and we know that he will even attack his own team mates to win mountain stages like he did last year when he was on T-Mobile. At least he got some vindication with his performance in the Vuelta.

Team Discovery Channel also made up for their disappointing showing in the Tour de France, showing their weakness in the post-Armstrong era, by winning the Team prize. And Egoi Martinez won the King of the Mountain prize, which made this Vuelta a very successful one. So, there is hope after all, but they better choose a big boy soon. The signing of Levi Leipheimer will make things very interesting for Discovery next year, and hopefully Levi will break through with the superior support and technology that Discovery uses during training and races.

Floyd Landis made an appearance on the final day to support his former team mates on Phonak, and maintained his innocence. I have not written much after the investigation went to the USADA, which is the only body that can strip Landis of his Tour de France title. It really is all up to the lawyers now.

Main Stream Sports Columnists

I've written before that American sports columnists don't know anything about other sports except for Football, Basketball, and Baseball. They are so totally out of their depth when it comes to commenting on soccer, hockey, the Olympics, and any endurance sports. The big three sports in America have the laxest doping controls in the world, and consequently, the reporters who cover them have the least exposure to how important doping controls are in the worlds of weight lifting, track and field, triathlons, and pro cycling. As I've said before, not one main stream sports columnist has ever mentioned that it makes no sense to take synthetic testosterone for a one day recovery. I don't think they ever will, although there might be slight chance of this happening if they cover the legal proceedings with the USADA. That's why seeing this kind of stuff really annoys me. Now, Floyd Landis should have just kept his mouth shut instead of offering all kinds conjecture on the test results. All he can do is offer conjecture, because the test results are odd, and I predict that the final investigation will show an inconclusive decision on the doping question. Even taking synthetic testosterone would not have produced the strange results that came up in the A and B samples. But what made me laugh most bitterly in this Whine of the Week story was this bit of "reasoning:"

The lab used by the Tour de France to test urine and blood samples is licensed by the World Anti-Doping Agency and must adhere to rigid standards. The testers don’t even know whose samples they are working with — all they see are code numbers.

This is an outright lie, when it comes to this particular lab. Even Pat McQuaid, president of the UCI, has admitted that they broke their own rules on athlete notification because they did not want this lab to leak the results to the French paper L'Equipe. Here's a direct quote from Pat: "Also, we know that the French laboratory has a close connection with L'Equipe, and we did not want this news to come through the press, because we are sure they would have leaked it." So, please, regular sports columnists, do your own research before you come up with drivel. Most of us have such low expectations of your colleagues in the other departments, don't drive it down further with shoddy performance in the sports department.

Update: Dick Pound loses it. Why is this man still in charge? There is no way to look at his latest rant and believe that he supports the clean athletes. He thinks every athlete is dirty. I can see the spittle on his keyboard as he wrote this:

"Who knows, USADA may subscribe to a suggestion that both athletes (Landis & Gatlin), in separate sports, were ambushed by a roving squad of Nazi frogmen and injected against their will with the prohibited substances."

Or this:

"Take cycling in 2006. If 2006 were to be measured in the Chinese cycle, it would be the Year of the Excrement".

For a more measured response, read the whole roundup for Bobby Julich's reaction to the Floyd Landis situation.

Landis Speculation Continues

It seems that both sides, the ADA's and Team Landis, are getting desperate.  Landis' Spanish lawyers have offered another "natural" explanation for the elevated T/E ratio: dehydration.  This is crap and anyone who saw the stage would agree.  The man consumed 71 bottles of water!  Also, medically, its highly unlikely.  Ah, lawyers, they always have to say something.  But on the other side, the chief of the Swiss ADA labs said the current testing protocol for testosterone doping is crap too!  The Lausanne, Switzerland laboratory had just completed a study which "indicated that there were major differences in the way the human body absorbs additional doses of the male sex hormone and reacts to it."  Here is what Martial Saugy, the Swiss chief, had to say about their research:

There is a very big variation between individuals, as much in the effects as in the ability to detect the product. The study does not conclude that dozens or hundreds of athletes are doped with testosterone, but that athletes are not all equal before testosterone doping.

Saugy warns that new testing procedures are not being developed because there are too many legal challenges to new doping research, which is hampering the research and the development of more accurate testing.  The Lausanne lab, according to the AFP, is the same lab that handled Tyler Hamilton's doping tests and eventually handed down his two year ban for blood doping.  Saugy's warning might be related to all the legal proceedings that centered around Hamilton's repeated and continuing denials of any doping on his part.

More Landis Opinion and Speculation

I'm not the only one asking about the stupidity of using testosterone to enhance performance for a single stage.  Dr. Gary Wadler, a member of WADA, whose psychotic boss Dick Pound apparently never got over being picked on by jocks in high school, offered the same objections on the validity of the positive result on the A sample.  Here's the money quote:

One-time use of steroids could result in an abnormal test, but it would have no effect on performance and could not account for Landis’ astounding feat Thursday, “so something’s missing here,” Wadler said. “It just doesn’t add up.”

According to Landis, in his press conference from Spain this morning, he was tested out of competition four times, and six times before stage 17, with no positive results.  Of course, the testers are confident in their lab results.  Dick (how appropriate) Pound, against WADA regulations, crowed about the positive test:

"When is this going to end? What is the UCI going to do about it?" he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's always disappointing when you see something like this. If there is a positive test, what have you got? The guys who came second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth at last year's event have been busted in the (Spanish investigation), and now the winner of this year's event is busted in the race itself. ... You build up and create a new hero, and he gets slapped down. It's a serious blow."

Sounds like Dick was only disappointed in not busting number one, Lance Armstrong.  Some things have come out during all the speculation: cortisone shots would not have affected the testosterone levels; alcohol would not have affected the test; some athletes have naturally high levels of testosterone, but it takes months of subsequent testing of endocrine levels to fight the allegations.  On that last point, Santiago Botero successfully fought a high T/E result in 1999.  This is all far from over. 

Tour Tidbit du Jour July 21, 2006

Today was a flat stage before the big "ride of truth," as they call the individual time trial, and poor Levi Leipheimer missed out on another stage win.  But everyone at the tour is still buzzing about Landis' Launch yesterday.  Speaking of buzzing, I was talking to my brother last night, and he related to me that after Floyd got into the yellow jersey the second time, he traded away one of his signed yellow jerseys to a tourist for a six pack of beer.  No word on the brand, because you should never drink it again!  On the next day, he promptly lost eight minutes on the climb up to La Toussuire.  Obviously, training has been hard on Floyd, and beer has been on his mind.  Beer has also been on the mind of Patrick O'Grady from Velonews, who asks the important questions, but gets no answers.  O'Grady wants to ask the very crucial follow-up:

Asked why he kept calling for water, more water, alternately drinking it and pouring it over his head, Landis quipped: "It was very hot. Maybe that was the explanation, or maybe it was the beer I had last night." No follow-up question. Good Lord, what the hell are they teaching in journalism schools these days? Stenography? Sobriety? The man has discovered the elixir of the gods in some anonymous French taproom and the sporting press just stands there like so many badly dressed mannequins, pondering their next hoary cliche.

For the record, according to Robbie Ventura, Floyd's personal coach, Landis consumed (drank, doused, and emptied) 71 water bottles on the road.