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.