posted by Patrick Herron at 1:14 PM
I'm a former (very) amateur cyclist with debilitating arthritis in my left knee. I live my dreams of cycling glory vicariously through people like Lance and Floyd.
My bias in Floyd's favor is offset by the familiarity I developed with performance-enhancing drugs while in high school; I *know* the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is far more prevalent than is being reported. Later in life I had a good friend who was advised by his college head coach that if he wanted to make the NFL he should take steroids. He did take steroids, and he did make the NFL. That coach is now a division I coacn at a big sports program. If Floyd used, it wouldn't be shocking. Cycling has been dirty for over two decades.
Having said that, I have serious and well-founded doubts that organization ssuch as the WADA or UCI can be effective at making determinations about drug use, at least not without checks and balances and good independent oversight.
My understanding of the underlying issues goes beyond the mere anecdotal. I've worked professionally as a researcher in gene toxicology at the NIEHS and later helped start two organizations in the US federal government that evaluate governmental test method standards both in the US and internationally. Let's just say I'm accustomed the the bureaucratic influences involved in setting standards like the ones used for detecting drug use in pro athletes. I have been first-hand witness to a phenomenon worse than groupthink: political machinations, dictated by greed, deliberately undermining the quality of well-researched test standards.
In December 2006 I completed graduate school. I studied the adoption of innovations by pharmaceutical companies for my master's thesis. My academic study focused on biomedical informatics: consumer health, evidence-based medicine, clinical and biotech data mining, and biomedical text mining. I took the Summer of 2006 off from school, working as an enterprise architect responsible for the reorganization of the SAS corporate support site, optimizing findability for the 4 million or so SAS users. I performed a great deal of language use analysis geared towards making sense out of large collections of expert domain documents, the domain of expertise in this case being statistical analysis.
I am currently seeking employment and have recently enjoyed some good interviews. I haven't found the right match yet. I want to get it right.
In my spare time I write poetry. I've written five books to date but have stopped writing for the moment. The second book of mine to be published will be released this fall by Effing Press. The forthcoming book, written by my puppet Lester, has enjoyed a cult status among poets for years.
3 Comments:
Free Landis???
Please no: Free the sport for his types. Face it: Hamilton, Landis, Ulrich (by the way I feel pretty sure about Lance too) - those fellows are common cheaters. Dpoing is cheating, and with these figures (11:1 where it's usually 1:1) there are no excuses.
Sometimes you might wonder if bikers just are doing dope - or smoking wheede too. It's incredible which excuses they perform: Hamilton had an unborn brother producing his own hormone - Floyd had been drinking beer and whiskey (and when everybody else get's hangovers, he goes out to perform the race of his life).
OK - in the category of bad excuses they are still only #2. Daniel Plaza still leads :-)
I feel truely sorry that the Floyd Landis TDF Stage 17 test results are coming back with an "adverse analytical finding" on both the A and B samples. Given the published statements coming from him and his lawyers, they certainly don't have a credible explanation.
So far, Landis and his legal team have come up completely lame with their theories/defenses/statements:
-naturally high testosterone levels
-drinking the evening before the stage
-dehyydration
-thyroid hormone medication
-hip pain medication
-invalidity of the T/E test
-invalidity of the IRMS test
-no artificial testosterone present in samples
-UCI mishandiing the dissemination of the information to the public
Pehaps they should spend more time thinking before they speak. The stupidity of their statements is swinging me toward the "Ladis must be guilty" camp. I really wanna believe that he's an upright, honest and hard working racer. The facts, however, are making it really difficult.
Now, my comments on remarks coming from others on; Why would he take testosterone? He never tested positive before? He couldn't be that dumb to dope during the Tour de France.
1). Motive for taking testosterone. It is a proven muscle recovery booster. It is obvious that Landis needed to recover from the blow-up of stage 16. Also, recovery is KEY to performing well during the last week of a 3 week long stage race. There was a HUGE motive to use testosterone after stage 16/before stage 17.
2). Landis never tested positive during any other race this year or otherwise. (Tour de California, Tour de Georgia, Paris Nice, Dauphine) I'm certainly not an expert, but it seems as though the pros are pretty good about beating drug tests (expecially the T/E testosterone test). I would say that either he has been "beating" the tests or maybe even won some of those races clean. Don't forget, they were all shorter races with less emphasis on recovery (granted they were tough!). He also may have "beaten" the tests during earlier stages of the tour.
3). What pro is stupid enough to dope only during stage 17 of the TDF? Perhaps this was the only time he got caught. It is possible that in his distress and drinking after stage 16, he forgot to use the testosterone masking agents? Perhaps he did not use the correct dosage? Perhaps overdosaged himself with synthetic testosterone? Made some sort of mental error.
The bottom line is that the motive, analytical tests and performance results all support testosterone doping by Floyd Landis during the TDF. He and his legal team have not indicated anything promising that would refute that.
My only hope is that after they receive the actual documentation, they can prove conclusively that it is false. It they can't, I agree with Greg Lemond. Floyd should come clean, name names and apologize!!!
I do not believe that multiple defenses equals self-incrimination. Have you ever been falsely accused of something? How many things are running through your mind? Sometimes those things running through your mind sound like, "well maybe it could seem like I'm guilty if I did X, but I didn't" and so on. He just opened his mouth WRT scenarios. It sort of reminds me of Kafka's _The Trial_ where the protagonist who stands accused of some vague crime tries to figure out exactly *what* crime, and often finds himself convincing himself he's guilty, not guilty, guilty, etc.
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