Landis Denies Cheating to Win Tour

It's official. The BBC is reporting that Landis failed the drug test as well. It is known that Landis was taking cortisone shots for his arthritic hip. Is this test a false positive from the cortisone or was he really doping?

Is this test a false positive from the cortisone or was he really doping

Although cortisone is a steroid, it does not affect the test/epitest ratio, which is the test he failed.

It is the nature of the sport. Athletes at this level are not injecting themselves in secret. They are working with doctors to design and monitor their drug regimens to avoid detection. Before the rhEPO test most if not all were using it, now they have gone back to traditional blood-doping methods. The doctors know how the tests work, and design regimens to avoid detection.

For example, WADA defines a test/epitest ratio of greater than 4:1 as a positive, doctors and athletes work to increase both as high as possible and as close to the 4:1 ratio as possible to avoid detection.

Talk about cynicism! Do you really believe that ALL cyclists are doping?

I am not cynical at all Vince, and I do not believe that all cyclists are doping. However I do understand the science behind performance enhancing drugs and the tests, and am not naive enough to believe that the only dopers are the ones who are caught.

The fishiest thing at this point, to me, is that as race leader Landis must've been tested before and after the positive test. Why haven't other results come back positive?

Yes, Landis was tested several time during the race. See my explanation of drug regimens above for how a single positive is possible. This is also one of the reasons why they conduct several tests during the race.

Also - why testosterone? It builds muscle over a period of weeks, but unless I've misread something, it doesn't function as a stimulant, increasing output for just a single day.

Correct, but a cyclist would not be interested in the muscle building capability. Elevated level of free testosterone would allow an athlete to work harder and recover faster

Lastly, testosterone isn't cleared out quickly by the system, which clearly Landis and co. would have known. So it looks like Landis is being accused of taking a banned substance that wouldn't directly improve his performance, and that he'd probably be caught for using. Sounds like a good idea to me...

Not entirely correct, I think you may be confusing active half-life with release time. Plain testosterone is cleared from the body very rapidly, well with a 24 hour time frame. Testosterone with an ester is released slowly, making free testosterone available anywhere from 1 to 14 days.

All that being the case, it seems like the take-away from this is that yes, Landis tested positive, and the question then is whether or not having a test/epitest ratio of 4.5:1 when most of the rest of the field would test at 3.5:1 constitutes 'cheating'. If on has to ante up for a competitive tour by doping to the maximum "allowable" levels, then that should be the media's focus. I'd love to see testosterone:epitestosterone tests for the other tested riders in the tour. That'd make it much easier to decide how to feel about this whole thing.

And the 8th year an American has won it... Part of me feels like it's a political move, and then part of me feels like it isn't. Either way, it's sad that it's happening.

Vince, by the same logic, it would hardly ever add up when an athlete tests positive.

I am not saying that Landis is guilty, just that some of the reasons being presented as to why he didn't or couldn't dope, just are not based on logic or reality.

If Landis does test positive, it will be because he did dope and his doctor was just unable to keep his ratio below the threshold for a positive result. The WADA has also just recently lowered the threshold from 6 to 4, due to the fact that almost everyone they were testing was falling just below 6. This was not a coincidence. Last year, WADA had more positive test results from cycling than from any other sport.

Personally, as much as I disagree with the WADA, I would trust them before I trust an athlete. This has nothing to do with the French.

Right, but how many people are beating the tests? Is this limited to a handful of guys in the peloton, or are we talking about a handful of guys in the peloton who aren't doping? It'd be interesting to see some data from a larger-scale study of hormone and hematocrit levels of a large number of cyclists throughout the season, and ideally even from before and after a professional cycling career begins.

I agree, but for the sake of fairness one should also read Tyler Hamilton's perspective on these issues at www.tylerhamilton.com. I think it's possible there is a great deal of truth to both sides of the story.

There is nothing about Tyler Hamilton's story that contradicts the others. His story involves the flawed HBTT test, which is one of the reasons I do not like the way WADA operates.

However, if the test was as flawed as Hamilton attempts to claim, one would expect a slew of positives.