Correction: testosterone is reputed to aid recovery, but AFAIK there is no scientific evidence to support such a claim. Be that as it may, it is a banned substance, so it's efficacy is irrelevant.

How is it Ironic if they (USADA) have acted properly as you have admitted that they continue to act properly.

I don't think headhunting is considered acting properly. To say that they can't comment regarding that accusation because of the rules , is ironic to me.

however the fact still remains that his blood produced adverse findings.

Well, that is the point isn't it. You are pointing out the results as facts. To be fair, you do refer to adverse findings, which if everyone stopped there, I would agree. Yet, Landis's camp has made points that the sample shouldn't even have been tested based on degradation issues clearly outlined in the testing code. A quick dip into the testing protocol reveals that the T/E ratio test is not all that straight forward in the first place, with a significant false positive rate. I don't see this as black and white.

It is going on 10 months and there has been no head to head, out in the open hearing to hash this out. We have the lab results and a lot of answered questions. I would dearly love to read a clear, accurate point by point rebuttal to the Landis claims from the testing agency.

How come if you are so unsure about the WADA and the testing procedures there aren't similair howls of protest when a european pro gets caught?

Landis, and Armstrong for that matter, get a lot more play in the U.S. media. We hardly even hear of European pros even when they win significant races, in the regular media. I am not a regular reader of the the online cycling websites (e.g. Velonews). Most of my info comes from posts on ST. Landis, however, makes the AP every time he speaks.

That said, the Euro case I do know about is the Spanish Puerto thing. I am not sure what you want me to say when they have blood bags, and DNA, and notebooks with names or code names. What I really would like to hear about in this particular case is a comment from Tyler Hamilton, as his name came up. So far, I haven't heard anything.

I found the Basso story this week amusing. By his intial comments, everyone thought he was going to turn over and blow the whole thing out into the open. Call it wishful thinking. Then, apparently he clarified himself, that he was gonna' do it, but didn't and therefore it really isn't all that bad. Weaseling at its finest.

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

but if it helps build muscle, wouldn't it be true that is helps spare muscle breakdown, hence recovery?

There sure are a lot of athletes getting popped for Testosterone, like the Russian female marathoner and the 100m dash co-world record holder, Justin Gaitlin. Seems it worksand the doping prescription of the patch-on-the-balls would seem to be quite easy to do. Here is an interesting write-up by Gladwell on the subject (he's no expert, but an interesting read): http://www.gladwell.com/...001_08_10_a_drug.htm

Did Landis ever have his Testosterone monitored to determine if his test was the result of an ongoing condition?

Perhaps the best example of the difficulties of drug testing is testosterone. It has been used by athletes to enhance performance since the fifties, and the International Olympic Committee announced that it would crack down on testosterone supplements in the early nineteen-eighties. This didn't mean that the I.O.C. was going to test for testosterone directly, though, because the testosterone that athletes were getting from a needle or a pill was largely indistinguishable from the testosterone they produce naturally. What was proposed, instead, was to compare the level of testosterone in urine with the level of another hormone, epitestosterone, to determine what's called the T/E ratio. For most people, under normal circumstances, that ratio is 1:1, and so the theory was that if testers found a lot more testosterone than epitestosterone it would be a sign that the athlete was cheating. Since a small number of people have naturally high levels of testosterone, the I.O.C. avoided the risk of falsely accusing anyone by setting the legal limit at 6:1.

Did this stop testosterone use? Not at all. 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."

I doubt the patch offers enough test. they would probably use a injection. which he could have used well before the test. since it is oil based, it would get stored in his fat cells. Which could have been released in his blood the day when he bonked on that hilly stage.

Seems that Don Catlin, who runs the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory (quoted above) thinks otherwise.

The word is that you use 4 patches at a time.

but if it helps build muscle, wouldn't it be true that is helps spare muscle breakdown, hence recovery?

When testosterone is used in building muscle it is literally consumed in gram quantities on a weekly basis. That would blow out any testosterone test. I wouldn't be surprised if a breathalyzer type test could detect testosterone at those levels.

Supposedly, the argument is that Landis used testosterone patches, which puts out milligram quantities (0.001 grams per milligram for those metrically impaired).

You are comparing two regimes that differ by a factor of a 1000 or more.

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

I guess that small amount does help. I guess the trick is to put it on your balls.

I doubt the patch offers enough test. they would probably use a injection. which he could have used well before the test. since it is oil based, it would get stored in his fat cells. Which could have been released in his blood the day when he bonked on that hilly stage.

The testosterone that is released from patches isn't stored. It circulates in the bloodstream for a while, but is basically gone in a day. Its effects are immediate, not delayed until needed.

which he could have used well before the test.

That isn't very clear. As a top rider, Landis could expect to be tested every day during the tour. Again as a top rider, he is also subject to unannounced out of competition testing. The reference from a few posts prior gives a pretty good account of the ins and outs of beating the system regarding testosterone.

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

Any help it provides is in the imagination of the person sticking it to the body part in question.

But, that being said, I've had athletes from various sports in the clinic admit consuming/injecting/snorting/placing in their rectum frankly *insane* things. I once asked a patient to identify one particular thing they were using because I did not recognize it. The response was, "I'm not sure. My "guy" thinks it is given to sled dogs."

Philbert

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Dr. Philip Skiba
Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes now available on Amazon!

That was my thought.

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fka: bassman

After the swim, I'm a fish outta water.

There sure are a lot of athletes getting popped for Testosterone, like the Russian female marathoner ...
Seems it worksand the doping prescription of the patch-on-the-balls would seem to be quite easy to do.

And just where exactly was she putting those patches???


;-)

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

Photos or it didn't happen ;-)

and now, after his stint at WADA is over, he is a candidate to become head of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)...

What a farce that would be.

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______________________________________________________

Proud Founder of the Jamis Mafia- Daring to be different.

yup. and as of right now, he's the only candidate who's been publicly named...

Since he failed the IRMS tests, it doesn't matter. Unless he can prove that for some reason he always fails the IRMS test...

Andrew:

I'm not sure if you are the person to ask, but I assume (dangerous, I know!) that during an event like the TDF there is enormous destruction of RBCs which could result in decreased aerobic capacity. Given the current testing regime it would be dangerous to use EPO. That being said, one could reinfuse previously removed blood and see some profound rebounds from one day to the next. As long as your blood parameters remained below UCI limits you would be fine. The only problem that could occur is if you reinfused blood that had been removed at a time in the year you were using synthetic testosterone (or any other prohibited substance). Thus, couldn't you test positive for synthetic testosterone or a skewed T/E ratio? This is appears to be what happened to the Finnish (oh, those sneaky Finns!) 10 000 m runner at the 1984 Olympics who tested positive for steroids as a result of blood doping using blood transfused from a steroid user (I think he later suggested the steroid user wasn't him but the donar). See below:

Another Finn, Martti Vainio, was caught in a strange way — he tested positive for steroids after he won the 1,000m (sic) silver in the Los Angeles Olympics and confessed that somehow traces of steroid must have stayed back in his blood which he had stored and later got transfused prior to the games.

* I understand that Martti later "admitted" that he was in fact a steroid user but given the history of Finns using blood doping it would appear possible that he was doing both - blood doping and using steroids.

Is it possible that what really happened to Floyd was that he reinfused prior to his miraculous comeback at the TDF?

Interested in your thoughts.