Tyler was kind enough to email me back in regards to the issue so I though I would post it here so you can get it straight from the man himself.
Matthew
***I would like to clarify up-front, that an unauthorized translation of the Tinkoff team?s initial press release issued in Italian on Friday, the 24th, has misinterpreted a quote from me. Although we notified the responsible parties of their error, and it was initially corrected, the quote has since been republished incorrectly. Given this confusion, the Tinkoff team has released a statement in response to the miscommunication. It is not a retraction; it is a clarification and assurance that the previous translation did reflect my comments. ***
So, again, I assure you I have not made a mistake but due to others mistakes I have paid a price.
Tyler
There you have it. I’m sure it doesn’t change the way people feel about him but maybe it clears things up for a few of us fans who care.
I think that’s a trigger-happy Italian trying to read too much into Tyler’s English.
I just wish the knuckle-draggers on this forum had actually bothered to read the actual evidence rather than the sports pages and sites. News outlets are always, always, always looking for a slant or something outlandish to sell more papers/ad spaces. There are no unbiased journalists. End of.
Maybe this has already been answered. But, if tests detected another persons DNA in his blood, did they test the DNA to determine if this person was related to him? Is that how the twin story came about?
The Velonews article was pretty convincing… They tried to cover both sides of the story.
I think if most people read the evidence themselves, they would be completely confused. We need experts to help us out, and good reporters will seek out the experts, like the folks at Velonews did.
To be clear about the twin thing. While stating a number of reasons why the test could have produced that result, his team of people said that chimera was a one of many reasons that the test could have gone wrong, but not that Tyler himself was a chimera. Tyler never said “I’m a chimera, thats why the test was non-negitive.” Again, that was a twist from the media that has made this case so hard for regular people who don’t have the time to go digging for the true story.
From his website:
Chimerism was identified by the authors of the test methodology as a potential cause for false positives
Because a false positive study was never conducted in support of the HBTT, it was argued that potential causes of mixed blood cells could not be ruled out
Tyler never stated he was chimeric or had a vanishing twin, which was misreported by the media. The authors of the original test method identified these phenomena in their own published papers as potential causes of mixed populations among other reasons - bone marrow transplant and serious illness. However these assumptions were never validated or examined by the authors of the test
USADA sent Tyler’s remaining blood samples from Athens and the Vuelta to a DNA expert to be tested for micro chimerism in August of 2005
I’m sure that his response to me was canned, as he probably got a thousand emails, but he was kind enough to add a few personal words. Being from Boulder our paths have crossed a few times and Tyler is a very kind person. We’ve ridden together and been at a few of the same parties. He was always very nice.
Even if he did dope, I’m all for serving your penalty and being forgiven after that. Thy gave him two years and two years is up. I’m sure that he’ll be tested like a MoFo when he races again.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I am sure he is a nice person who makes mistakes like the rest of us, and has to pay for them in one way or another. The ‘believetyler’ website still rubs me the wrong way.
What I find so frustrating is that personally, - I really want to believe in the addage “innocent until proven guilty.” But, - in a sport where drug use is so pervasive, and some of the people, - (not just the racer), - who are involved with doping can be incredibly talented in avoiding detection. But what’s really frustrating is that we’ll simply never know the truth. Each new accusation yields tons of speculative news articles, and posts on forums such as this; falling on one side or the other, - yet yielding no conclusion and/or decision. This makes it difficult to watch races sometimes, wondering what some of these folks would be doing if they weren’t juiced. Or, wondering if some of the “middle of the pack” people are not juiced, and where would they be if they were?