posted by Patrick Herron at 11:41 AM
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.
18 Comments:
Erm.
Yeah, that's bizarre. I'm rather disturbed that over half the competitors are "allowed" to dope.
Of course, Floyd had a medical exemption too. But for cortisone, not testosterone.
Interesting article today at the New York Times: Ex-Teammates of Cycling Star Admit Drug Use.
roadtoad this is an *excellent* question. never thought of that point. i think the reason is that he passed the remainder of his T/E tests? But that still does not make sense. I would think the results on the positive T/E would have come back soon enough to decide to maintain the second samples from subsequent tests even is the subsequent tests turned up negative for T/E. Apparently the sample pairs from negative T/E results get split up and the B sample is discarded? I need to check that...so incredibly busy right now that it's down the list of priorities, sadly. I may have even posted the documentation needed on this blog in August. Just don't remember right now...
60% of the 105 tested. That 105 is a sufficiently large sample for me to say with a high degree of confidence that 60% (plus or minus a few percent) of all riders have such certificates. 105 is a big sample no matter how you look at it, and it's a really big sample relative to the total population size (200 riders?).
IN FEFENSE OF FLOYD LANDIS; Having sex can spike testrone levels. Therefore, cyclists should not have sex even hours before being tested for drugs. Testrone gets released into the blood where it remains for hours. Often times its enough to give a spontaneous erection the following morning after a night of sex.
I think that the cycling profession is largely corrupt, whether it's these testing agencies or the cyclists themselves. And I think Landis is NOT exclusive from it all.
I'm an editorial cartoonist, so I wanted to hear what people Pro and Anti-Landis thought. You can check out my cartoon here.
listen. floyd cheated. sorry if he looks like your best friend or something. he had five different stories out of the gate. he threaten to reveal things about Lemond on his own web blog. his manager tried to scare Lemond away from the hearing. if this is how things play out when someone's innocent I have to throw out a lifetime of observation.
Bottom line, Landis and many others may use any kind of substance under the sun to provide them with some semblance of health. That is not the crime. The true crime is the "seeing is not believing" stance the officials take and spread to the rest of the public who have to watch these useless titles being stripped one by one. I believe Landis won the 06 tour and he will continue to be the winner because I saw him ride faster than anyone else. Stay strong Landis because there are millions of people who know what truth is and hard work and actions of circumstance pay off bigger than any title or medal ever could.
I don't think there is enough information given on the topic. I first read about this on GlobalGrind's myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/theglobalgrind, and wanted to see if i could find more details, but i couldn't. So it sounds to me like he's guilty and thought that just because it was cycling and not some hugely watched sport like baseball that he would get away with it.
Has the possibility been looked into that Floyd was dosed with transdermal Androgel (testosterone gel 1%) just after the ride? Moving through the crowd, someone only needed to slap him on the shoulder and the substance would have been absorbed through the lycra. Would this have resulted in the same chemical signature? I would view the videos of him after the ride very carefully to see if this was done. It is my impression that the post race area is not a well controlled environment. Also, the administration of 10 to 15 grams of Androgel (100-150 mg of pure testosterone) in this way would be difficult to detect on a sweated up jersey.
doesnt make him innocent, does it?
He's guilty. To hide behind the everybody else's doing it defense is crap. For god's sake, how about a new angle - one where you train and earn the title as it used to be earned?
Bye Floyd.
While we are not cyclists, my friends and I watched the Tour de France on television for several years during summer vacations. Our vacations happen to coincide with the race. We used the race for inspiration while we were relaxing away from our jobs, marveling at the skill and sheer determination of the competitors. From an outsider's point of view, the race was better than any motivational speech. But with the controversy around Floyd, disqualifications in the following year and ongoing press about doping, like the piece cited in the original post, most of my friends have abandoned watching the race. What are we looking at? Great athletes or great chemistry? Will Frishkorn be tossed out like Rasmussen? I feel sorry for the non-doping cyclists who have to tolerate this nonsense in their sport. The report cited by the poster does nothing to convince me about the innocence or guilt of Floyd... it's just another thing to turn me away from becoming a cycling fan.
While I'm sympathetic to anyone who may have been unjustly accused, it's very hard for me to find an explanation for the below, taken from Wikipedia, which seems to indicate Landis indulging in the most reprensible kind of tactics.
Also, as a strategic matter, I find the Landis team's willingness to use any and all possible explanations not to work for me. Instinctively, I feel that if someone is innocent, they will have one story and stick to it.
The LeMond testimony
On May 17, 2007 Greg LeMond took the stand in the USADA arbitration hearing. Under oath, he described a phone conversation he had with Floyd Landis on August 6, 2006 as well as another with Will Geoghegan, Landis's business manager, on May 16th, the evening before the testimony. The major points of the testimony are as follow:
In an August 6 phone conversation, LeMond allegedly told Landis that If you did (use banned substances), you could single-handedly change the sport. You could be the one who will salvage the sport, to which Landis allegedly responded What good would it do? If I did, it would destroy a lot of my friends and hurt a lot of people.[54]
LeMond disclosed his childhood sexual abuse by a LeMond family friend to Landis. I was sexually abused before I got into cycling, and it nearly destroyed me by keeping it secret, LeMond allegedly said to Landis. (Lying about doping) will come back to haunt you when you are 40 or 50. If you have a moral compass and ethics, this will destroy you.[54]
Will Geoghegan called LeMond at his personal mobile phone number the night before the scheduled testimony. LeMond's BlackBerry, with Geoghegan's phone number captured in the call log, was entered into evidence. [54]
According to Lemond quoted in the Sunday Times the conversation with Geoghegan was,
“ “Hello.”
“Greg?”
“Yeah, this is Greg.”
“Hi Greg, this is your uncle.”
“My uncle?!?”
“This is your uncle. Do you remember me?”
“Who is this?”
“This is your uncle and I’m going to be there tomorrow and we can talk about how we used to play hide the weenie.”
“Who the f*** is this?”[55]
”
Following the testimony, Landis's legal team announced that Geoghegan had just been fired as Landis's business manager. Geoghegan was also observed by reporters approaching LeMond during the break. LeMond later stated to reporters that Geoghegan had admitted making the call, and "tried to apologize".[54] Landis has admitted to being in the same room as Geoghegan when the call was made[56], and defended his decision not to fire Geoghegan until after the LeMond testimony, saying he had been waiting for legal advice. Landis has not commented on how Geoghegan came to know of LeMond's childhood sexual abuse as well as his personal mobile phone number. Geoghegan blamed "a beer or two" for his action, and entered an undisclosed rehab facility on May 21.[57] The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation of the incident as a potential witness tampering [58] and then terminated the case without prosecution on July 31.[59]
LeMond's testimony is arguably supported by an online posting Floyd Landis made on the Daily Peloton forum, in which he states that LeMond disclosed personal information of a sensitive nature to Landis, and threatened to use the information to damage LeMond if he continues to involve himself in Landis's USADA appeal process:
Unfortunately, the facts that he divulged to me in the hour which he spoke and gave no opportunity for me to do the same, would damage his character severely and I would rather not do what has been done to me. However, if he ever opens his mouth again and the word Floyd comes out, I will tell you all some things that you will wish you didn't know...[60]
Floyd is an as*ho*e.
Floyd Landis: Liar, Cheat, Sociopath
The despicable way Landis conducted himself at the CAS hearing at Peperdine (when his manager tried to threaten/blackmail Greg LeMond) told me everything I needed to know.
I wasn't surprised at his admission yesterday he was a long time doper. Nor his pathetic attempt to take down the generation of American riders he came up with. Classless, bitter guy.
It's too bad he took so many people who contributed to his defense fund and bought his book.
He's so cynical, he literally had people pay money to be lied to.
Floyd Landis is a Bitch. He's your little sister that makes stories up to get you in trouble in order to get attention. Floyd, find the tallest mountain in the US and ride your bike off of it.
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