… with this bulletin. If you haven’t already heard, the Anti-Doping Review Board recommended moving forward with disciplinary action against Floyd Landis for the alleged positive testosterone result following the 17th stage of the Tour de France. Information can also be found at FloydLandis.com.
Landis’ press release notes that their move for dismissal last week, which has been rejected, will form the basis of a very strong defense that will clear his name in “an open and public forum.” I sure hope so. The information that has come out from the Landis side certainly makes it sound like there’s enough doubt about whose results were reported that it would be hard to reach a definitive conclusion that Landis had doped.
And, if as they assert, there was some mix-up in whose samples were tested, then I don’t see how they could make a determination that it was Landis who doped. If the results are accurate, then perhaps someone did dope on stage 17, but until the code for the offending sample is matched up to the actual rider’s name, we won’t know who it was.
Landis’ side could certainly help win the court of public opinion by releasing the information they do have. Perhaps they are waiting for the appropriate moment to do so. Like say a Perry Mason type moment during the arbitration hearing that is yet to come. They’ve asked for open hearings so the public can see and hear the arguments being made, and so there can be true transparency in the proceedings. I applaud them for doing so.
It will be interesting if USADA will agree to such hearings. As I understand it, according to some new rules that came into force in the last couple of years, Landis is entitled to an open hearing if he requests one. A number of reports have said that USADA is willing to do that. Props to them for having the guts to do so, assuming those reports are true.
In retrospect, I think it was too much to hope that the Review Board would recommend dismissal of this case — regardless of how strong a case Howard Jacobs made in his request for dismissal. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of pressure on the ADRB and on USADA as a whole to move this case forward and to sanction Landis. The UCI and WADA have a huge stake in the outcome of this case. If Landis is exonerated, the credibility of the whole anti-doping machine will be shot to hell. They certainly don’t want that to happen, and as I’ve said in other posts, they’re going to fight tooth and nail to prevail.
This result may well be an indication of just how hard the fight is behind the scenes. By not dismissing the case, the burden of proof in on Landis and his representatives. Had the recommendation been for dismissal, the burden of proof would have been on WADA. And in that case, WADA would be starting from a position of weakness rather than strength.
Because of how the deck is stacked against Landis process-wise, it’s going to take some very good work on Jacobs’ part to prove Landis’ innocence. I’m not even sure that this process will ultimately do so. Part of me wonders if the ultimate result, if Landis prevails, will not so much be a finding of innocence as a finding of insufficient evidence to prove the doping offense.
The latter is just a “not guilty” verdict, which I don’t think Floyd Landis would be too happy with. But if it were between that and spending two years sitting out and wondering if they would try to pin another rap on him right before his suspension was supposed to end (as is currently happening to Tyler Hamilton), I wouldn’t be surprised if Landis would grudgingly take the not guilty finding.
I find it interesting that this announcement had to come from the Landis camp, and that USADA didn’t release the information. I’m not sure what to make of that, especially given the notoriety this case has acquired in the last two months. TBV suggests that this could be an indication that they’ve finally silenced the loudmouths and closed the leaks.
And I wonder whether LNDD will allow any of the data on Landis’ other tests to be released, and what data they have. It would be interesting to see whether any of the remaining B samples from prior negative tests would produce similar results if put through the IRMS/CIR protocols. And it would be interesting if there is enough of the stage 17 B sample left to test at another lab and see what that result would bring.
I doubt very much that any of this will be allowed to happen, as LNDD controls access to the material, and they certainly wouldn’t want any tests conducted elsewhere that would show their work to be faulty.
So, for the moment, this sad sham of a process rolls on. Perhaps this is for the best. If Landis really has a strong case against these bastards, publicly airing it will put the heat on them — at least for a little while.
Stay tuned for more commentary. And watch for breaking news over at Trust But Verify.
Our previously scheduled rant, on the two San Francisco reporters facing jail time for refusing to name their sources in the BALCO investigation, will appear here in the coming days.
I am no scientist, so I hope that someone can explain certain aspects of the Floyd Landis case to me in terms that a layman like myself can understand. Here is my question; Is it scientifically possible for the human body to process and eliminate the amount of testosterone supposedly taken by Landis. In other words on the day of stage 15 Landis would have been tested as the new yellow jersey holder and his T/E ratio presumably was below the “legal” limit of 4:1 as he was NOT deemed positive that day. Allegedly before stage 17 Landis then took enough synthetic testosterone to raise his T/E ratio to 11:1. Now I don’t know how much testosterone that would take but it seems to me that it would have to be a great amount to raise his T/E ratio by somewhere between 300% and 1000%! Now comes the part I am questioning. TWO days later when Landis regained the yellow jersey after stage 19 he should have been tested again. Once again his ratio presumably was below 4:1. Is this humanly POSSIBLE? In 2 days can the human body eliminate all of that extra testosterone allegedly in his system? If the answer is no, then Landis is innocent and there is something else going on. If the answer is yes, then it is quite likely that he is guilty. It seems a rather simple way to solve the case, admittedly from a very simple person when it come to understanding scientific minutiae.
Paul,
You raise some interesting questions. But there’s a problem with your assumption about whether Landis took testosterone. The media reports the T/E ration as 11:1, but what they don’t provide you with is the data that ratio comes from. So, if Landis had an E value in the normal range, the ratio means he had 11 times that value for his T. From the limited information that’s been made public, Landis had a T value that was normal, but his E value was one-eleventh the normal value. The ratio comes out the same, but it has a whole different meaning. So it’s not really clear that he took testosterone to begin with. The question of how could it be possible for Landis to be within the accepted T/E ratio on every other test but this one is an important question in this case. And it turns out, as strange as it may sound, that going on a bender after stage 16 could actually be the cause of the result. Alcohol apparently can reduce the E value significantly. That being the case, Landis could well be innocent. Hope this answers at least part of your questions.
– Rant
I am not assuming he took testosterone but if the “powers that be” insist their “fool-proof” test is accurate and they insist Floyd had synthetic testerone in his system then THEY are saying he took testosterone. Which brings us back to my question of whether the human body can eliminate all of that “extra” testosterone in just 48 hours. By the way maybe WADA should call their tests “FOOL’S proof” in honor of Dick Pound.
Paul,
I agree with you on calling the test Fool’s Proof. And I applaud Pat McQuaid for calling for Dick Pound’s removal from office. Point taken that it is the powers that be who are claiming Floyd took testosterone. But there’s a problem with the belief that the tests are “fool-proof”. WADA themselves have data that shows that diet, alone, can cause a false positive test in one out of every 31 tests. That is way too high a rate of false positives. It should be around a very small fraction of one percent for the tests to truly be “fool-proof”. And there’s a problem with the test itself. It is a difficult test, easy to screw up, and it’s subject to interpretation. The test compares the Carbon-13 level in the testosterone with another hormone or hormone metabolite in the urine. Turns out, the reference compounds are metabolites of cortisone. This is an important fact, because Landis had a medical exemption to use cortisone for his bum hip. But the fact that the test would in essence be comparing the Carbon-13 in his testosterone versus a metabolite that has at least some derivatives of synthetic cortisone could throw off the results. As for your question about how fast the synthetic testosterone would clear from the system: good question. I don’t know the answer to that for certain, although I’ve heard it can clear fairly quickly, perhaps on the order of 12 to 14 hours. But there’s one other factor that could be more devastating to their case than the relative accuracy of the test. And that’s the claim by Howard Jacobs (Floyd’s lawyer) that on close inspection of the lab’s report it turns out that some of the samples tested had identifying codes that did not belong to Landis. If that’s true, then they (and we) don’t know who tested positive — assuming that the test results were accurate. That alone should be enough to clear Landis.
– Rant