Floyd Landis - Innocent?

[Ortho]

Honestly, I have no idea either. Sometimes, the "defense" thinks up new objections or brings in experts that testify to some really fussy lab procedure and try to pass it off as standard, but there is (as appears to be in this case) usually a standard procedure and it is a mystery to me why labs can ever allow themselves to make basic handling errors and the like. It seems to happen way to often, even with top-notch labs, and I don't know how you can make or oversee a basic error in a case where someone's life or livelihood is at stake and still have a job the next day.

[lacticacid]

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This is just the standard "attack the labs" tactic that people in this spot (and criminal defendants) use. It looks like there are procedural problems, etc.

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How do you prove you are innocent? You attack the procedure that falsely said you were doping. This isn't getting off on a technicality, it is getting off because the test results can not be trusted.

His testosterone levels were not elevated. It was his his other hormone levels that were depressed. One of the charges against the lab is that the used the mass spec incorrectly.

The IMRS results were gathered using a faulty procedure. The results themselves were ambigous, as at some labs they would have been read as negative.

The same two technicians performed both tests. Of course they are going to find the same results. The whole B sample testing process is flawed. There should be some sort of double blind procedure with the sample being tested and fake samples that are also being tested to remove bias.

[Ortho]

This was all hashed out last fall, and I don't feel like getting into it. I agree with what you are saying, from the standpoint of requiring all these things as proof, from a legal standpoint, before you can enter any kind of judgment or assess any kind of penalty.

However, what I am saying is that meeting the legal standard (which is important and should be litigated as they are doing) and making up your own mind as a civilian as to whether you think that Floyd artifically supplemented with testosterone before his great ride last July are two different things. Maybe he's the only innocent guy in cycle racing, maybe this is truly avant-garde science that was horribly conducted by a team of chimpanzees, maybe everyone in the labs and in the media colluded in misinterpreting and overcooking the interpretation of the data, maybe the anti-doping bodies are all pressing unreliable science against him for whatever nefarious reasons, and maybe the statements coming from Floyd's legal team are the only ones that we can trust.

However, that's a lot of maybes and (I cannot stress enough that I am a big fan of Floyd's and of cycle racing--check last year's TDF thread for more detailed thoughts on these things) I am as a civilian fan of cycle racing am going to go with the common-sense interpretation in a notoriously dirty sport until someone who is not on Floyd's side comes out to convince me. This does NOT mean that I don't think that he shouldn't get to fight this out as a legal process for keeping his title and clearing his name professionally, etc. It just means that, provisionally, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is found in a duck pond, chances are that it is a duck even if there is not sufficient proof to conclude that as a matter of law. How unlucky and heartbreaking for him (and, frankly, us) if he just happened to get this weird result, that he's never had before, the day after the greatest performance in recent memory. But there is eventually a certain level of coincidence where I as a civilian am comfortable with coming to the wrong conclusion.

[DesertCat]

Stupid questions. Wasn't he tested almost every day during the race? Isn't this something that would show over multiple days, and multiple tests? Or is testosterone something he could take a one day chance at improving his performance that would be out of his system by the next day?

[ZBTHorton]

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Stupid questions. Wasn't he tested almost every day during the race? Isn't this something that would show over multiple days, and multiple tests? Or is testosterone something he could take a one day chance at improving his performance that would be out of his system by the next day?

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He had this one day where he just took off, and basically whipped the competition. Supposedly the bad test was on this day, or the next day...if I am remembering correctly.

[lacticacid]

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Stupid questions. Wasn't he tested almost every day during the race? Isn't this something that would show over multiple days, and multiple tests? Or is testosterone something he could take a one day chance at improving his performance that would be out of his system by the next day?

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He had this one day where he just took off, and basically whipped the competition. Supposedly the bad test was on this day, or the next day...if I am remembering correctly.

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He was tested, I believe 7 times during the tour. You are tested if you win a stage, if you are in any of the jersey's, and I think 1 random rider.

None of his other testes were positive.

The state 17 results were as much a result of team tactics as of individual results. The stage before the other teams stomped on Phonak and Landis, causing Landis to crack. On stage 17, the Phonak team lit it up before he attacked and then the others hesitated in chasing until it was too late.

What bothers me is people always say that people are getting off on technicalities. If you are accused of doping the only way you can prove you are innocent is through technicalities. If you believe the test results are wrong you have to attack how the testing was carried out to prove they were wrong.

If you were driving along at 55 mph and a cop pulls you over and says his radar clocked you at 115mph. You and your lawyer find out that the radar gun was not calibrated properly. The charges are then dismissed, did you get off on a technicality?

[tdarko]

"What bothers me is people always say that people are getting off on technicalities. If you are accused of doping the only way you can prove you are innocent is through technicalities. If you believe the test results are wrong you have to attack how the testing was carried out to prove they were wrong.

If you were driving along at 55 mph and a cop pulls you over and says his radar clocked you at 115mph. You and your lawyer find out that the radar gun was not calibrated properly. The charges are then dismissed, did you get off on a technicality?"

I agree with you too. I have read so so much on this since I cycle (for fitness and as a hobby--not for sport) and am a HUGE fan of the sport. I do agree the sport is dirty but I also think that the French try to make the riders they didn't want to win dirty, especially Americans considering they hate Americans with a passion. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence against French testing that shows how much they go out of their way to try and "make" them guilty instead of find them guilty. Like you say, you can prove someone is guilty but you can't prove that you are innocent, no amount of clean tests are good enough.

For instance, take Tyler Hamilton's positive: He races in Athens and the World Anti-Doping Agency uses a new protocol in which they take two samples from each rider (Sample A & Sample B) and then for a positive to result the two samples have to be identicle. For some reason they froze Tyler's B sample and ruined it. The A sample was originally ruled clean (negative) and then they went back and changed it to positive. When investigated they found that the testing had all kinds of problems; a string of mislabelings, relabelings, lack of expertise, evidence of incompetence and a suspicion that someone was going after Tyler. Just as they went through Lance's garbage, corticoid cream--list goes on and on and on and on.

I believe it wasn't a year later when Lance was caught in the middle of this, fought it and they quickly retreated when they were caught in their lies. This story is hilarious b/c people were like--Lance cheated roflmao blah blah blah! The French lab was refining its test by thawing and testing forty urine samples from 1999, which was a likely year for EPO abuse (the test for EPO was perfected in 2001). Those 40 samples were identified only by a 6 digit number and a dozen tested positive for EPO. A doping reporter used those 6-digit numbers and matched Armstrong to six of those positive tests. She concluded that during the prologue and stages 1, 9, 10, 12 and 14 he had EPO in his system. From comments of a reporter that obtained these records the news spread like crazy--I mean it is France.

Then I remember a retired Lance go on Larry King and shove it up their ass and reveal all the holes in this sham they call a scandal. First, the test had only Lance's B sample's, the A sample's were destroyed in the original tests rendering any results unconfirmable. Then there was the fact that Armstrong was tested 17 times during the tour, why were there only 6 positives? For that matter what about the 150 clean tests that he has produced since then? People need to realize he is the most tested man on the planet, his wife was in labor with their twins and headed to the hospital when the anti-doping agency showed up at their front door demanding a piss sample--which has to be done or else he is assumed guilty. He also has a clause in his contract that states if he is found guilty he forfits everything, his sponsors and his contract--why would he risk millions and millions of dollars if he is the most tested man on the planet and a negative test cleans him out? The people that assume guilty don't realize that his VO2 Max levels were higher than most tour riders when he was 16 and that his heart is 1/3 larger than the rest of the tour (the average pro cyclist has a larger heart than the average person FWIW). Lance is genetically gifted first, second he trained in the mountains longer and harder than any other rider--when it was sleeting and everyone else was inside staying away from the common cold he was churning out the Pyrenees and thirdly he rode the course before the tour and knew every inch of it, every slick spot, and every sharp turn. He was better gifted, better trained, and equipped with more data...this is why he won.

Anyway, his comments on the way they went about the testing were "A guy in a Parisian lab opens up your sample, you know, Jean-Francois So-and-So, and he tests it- nobody's there to observe, no protocol was followed--and then you get a call from a newspaper that says, 'We found you to be positive six times for EPO.' Well, since when did newspapers start governing sports"?

The truth is that cycling is obviously dirty, this is true when you look at the extensive list of cyclists that have tested positive. What you have to do is figure out who they are are attacking and who they are find.

[DesertCat]

I saw the 60 minutes episode on Tyler Hamilton and the test he failed. It was supposed to detect if you had someone else's blood in your system, but they had some very respected doctors who said that it's common for some people to actually absorb the blood of an unborn twin when they get fused together early in pregnancy. The doctors said the test was so over sensitive and poorly designed that it was detecting this unborn twin blood. The WADA basically refused to respond in any way other to say "we think the test is fine".