I guess ST doesn't get as excited about failures to follow procedure and statistical outliers as it does about doping allegations.

*shrug*

"ST doesn't get as excited about failures to follow procedure and statistical outliers as it does about doping allegations."

if you search, you'll find huge threads and long posts about this. landis ought to win this case based on what i've seen, and USADA ought to help him win it. USADA is the "results management" agency of record, and managing results means you protect or you prosecute your athlete depending on the case. unfortunately, WADA takes a "throw the bums out" stand even when its own code is violated (and the IOC weighed in on this when it censored dick pound, or admonished him, whatever it is you call the IOC's statement of a couple of weeks ago). i'm just concerned that USADA will likewise take the politically correct road and seek to prosecute landis instead of to treat him fairly.

we ought to hate drug cheats but we ought to set up proper procedures for dealing with them, and then follow these procedures.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

It's a frustrating situation all around. On one hand you want to believe Landis that he has been the unfortunate victim of a botched testing protocol or some other conspiricy - but every athlete accused of a positive test says the same thing whether they are truley guilty or not. On the other had you have the testing officials claiming adamantly that the testing is infallible. That the results speak for themselves and there is no dispute.

However this ends up, it's going to be a mess and I suspect that it is far from being truely over, whatever the outcome is.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Funny how I think that the "politically correct road" is to let this cheater walk on a minor technicality.

I would like to see a road where it doesn't cost the accused $550,000 and seven months and counting to defend him or herself. Technicality, or not, doesn't the process need to change?

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- Matt

I wonder if we'll have a 2007 winner before we know who won 2006.

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"Pace is just a matter of having enough RedBull..." -Rappstar

I'm so sick of it I'm just trying to forget the 2006 Tour and don't care who "won" as I think everyone involved lost.

Hoping for a good (and clean) 2007 race though. Possibly a triumph of hope over expectation...

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Forget speedwork. Speedwork is the icing on the cake and you don't have a cake yet. - MattinSF

Basically they have 9 tenants, live life to the fullest, do not turn the cheak, and embrace the 7 deadly since. - TheForge (on satanists)

What makes you think he cheated?
-HWM

The fact that he tested positive.

typical response. if you pay any attention to the case, instead of just label someone a "cheater", it seems clearer and clearer that there is GOOD reason to believe that Landis did nothing of the kind and is a victim of someone/something else's agenda to discredit the Tour at the cost of a high profile athlete.

i don't care if that is a run-on sentence.

Wouldn't you think that when the sample was matched with the TdF winner that they would snap to attention and do EVERYTHING by regulation?

Why are the A/B sample values different? How about Rutger Betke? So many questions?
-HWM

While the underlying problem of doping is disturbing, this climate of hysteria disturbs me far more. If I was a clean pro cyclist, I'd be really worried about getting caught up in one of these cases.

If Landis didn't test positive, I stand corrected then. But I guess he did, didn't he?

If they were doing it by regulation, the lab wouldn't have matched it with the tdf winner!!!!

Rutger Beke was a totally different case...EPO...naturally occuring and all that.

THIS seems more and more like someone wanted the winner of the TdF (whoever it was) found guilty of doping. How do you explain all the inconsistencies and problems with this case? How do you explain today's news that some of Landis's samples were not anonymous, but clearly marked with his name; that the same lab techs worked on the A and B samples, violating their own protocol; that the carbon isotope machine used to test for synthetic substances in Landis's samples is more than a decade old, runs on DOS-based software, has never had a software update, and that the lab does not even possess an owner's manual for the machine; and, finally, that tests results were doctored after Landis's lawyers had already seen the documents, and then the doctored results were re-inserted into the proceedings and marked as "original" documents?

All terrible. And nothing points to Landis as being a doper.

i dont think you understand paulo..... there as been a mistake on Landis test and because of that....he hasnt test positive. So now, be nice and dont accuse anyone.....bad paulo

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

"If I was a clean pro cyclist"

this is one hell of an assumption...

not necessarily. see my previous post.

Dang! you beat me to it.

[reply]The fact that he tested positive.[/reply]

Wait, wait, wait... you're an engineer... with a PhD!

Imagine you're at a build site and the main truss for your structure is delivered. The manufacturer then tells you that the truss passed fail-safe inspection with a rating of (in normalized coordinates) 3, but you know their protocol calls for a value of 2.5 or less.

***
Do you take delivery of that truss anyway?
***

Of course not! That is what happened in this case. The lab tested his A sample and it failed the calibration for being a useable sample, but they used it anyway. This whole thing is a case of bad lab work.

One cannot draw a conclusion on if Landis did or did not dope because there is no valid data to use.

This whole thing ends with that simple fact. Cheat, no cheat? No one knows.

You do know what the word nothing means?

way to ignore everything else i said just so you can call someone a cheater and seem so EXTREME and hardcore.