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5039. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 2:24:47 PM Latest from velonews
If the "B" test is positive, Landis will likely undergo endocrine tests to determine his naturally occurring testosterone levels and then could challenge the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The basis of the urine test is the T/E ratio, a balance between testosterone and epitestosterone in the body. Most adults have a range between 1:1 to 2:1, but the UCI has set the threshold at 4:1 to allow for riders with naturally occurring his testosterone levels.
The T/E ratio can vary widely within individuals, and in some cases the T/E ratio may be above the 4:1 ratio without doping while others can stay below the threshold despite cheating. The ratio tends to be constant over time, but wild swings may indicate doping. Other factors can cause swings in the ratio, such as dehydration, fatigue and even alcohol.
Anything above that threshold sends a red flag for doping controls. Landis would not reveal what his T/E ratio was in the samples taken after stage 17 into Morzine, when he went on an all-day solo attack to crawl his way back into overall contention.
The T/E ratio is not a sure-fire way to measure testosterone in the body, but it's the only detection method currently used under anti-doping controls.
Other riders have been caught up in the T/E ratio web and some have been cleared after proving with endocrine testing they have naturally high occurring testosterone levels.
Most famously was ex-Phonak teammate Santiago Botero, who tested for high levels in 1999 but was eventually cleared. Botero, incidentally, is implicated in the "Operación Puerto" doping investigation in Spain and was not allowed by his team to start the 2006 Tour.
Last year's Dauphiné Libéré winner Iñigo Landaluze also tested high for testosterone. Subsequently, the Spanish federation ruled that he had normally high levels of testosterone and cleared him to race, a decision the UCI is appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Earlier this season, another Phonak rider, Sascha Urweider, was suspended from the team for revealing high levels of testosterone.
I'd tend to think that if Phonak had already busted someone for testosterone this year that Landis would've taken pause.
Besides that seems like an awful lot of people are getting busted for testosterone in general. 5040. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 2:27:31 PM Testosterone 101 - velonews
Andrew Pipe, a physician and medical and scientific adviser to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports in Ottawa, says that synthetic testosterone is normally injected, but taking it in the middle of an athletic competition would have little effect in boosting performance.
"Anabolic steroids, of which testosterone is the granddaddy, can have a central nervous system effect," he said. "But anabolic steroids largely work by increasing the capacity for training and increasing the bulk and tolerance of muscles. That isn't going to happen in a few hours.
"The effect of the testosterone is not going to be experienced unless there's a very significant training endeavor associated with it as well."
Pipe cautioned that the initial uproar over the high levels of testosterone detected in Landis's system may prove to be premature, depending on the outcome of additional testing that will have to be carried out before a definitive judgment is made. Taken by itself, he said, an elevated testosterone finding in the rider's A urine sample is enough to raise suspicions, but it does not automatically implicate the athlete as a doping cheat. 5041. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 2:30:02 PM If no such comparable data is available, Pipe said, the rider will have to be tested again in the future. For this reason, Pipe said he was surprised that the findings from Landis's A sample have been made public. "The last thing I would want is for the suspected athlete to know that we're on to the fact that he or she may have an unusually high TE ratio and that we may have to administer further tests." 5042. alistairconnor - 7/28/2006 2:37:42 PM seems like an awful lot of people are getting busted for testosterone in general.
-- that's because testosterone use has been rife in cycling for years (the Spanish case is clear concrete evidence of this). The busts are a fairly recent thing, and the riders haven't quite got the message yet it seems.
anabolic steroids largely work by increasing the capacity for training and increasing the bulk and tolerance of muscles. That isn't going to happen in a few hours.
This is what I mean about a strawman. It's a fallacious argument :
* The MAIN reason people take steroids in sport is to build muscle.
* That doesn't work overnight.
* Therefore testosterone won't increase your performance the next day.
This ignores the fact that testosterone has a well-understood SECONDARY effect : it enhances recuperation.
Any "expert" who ignores this effect in the current case is simply being disingenuous.
Clearly, the recuperation effect is sufficient reason to take it in Floyd's circumstances, if he thought he could get away with it.
5043. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 3:04:52 PM Motive is not guilt.
I agree with the writer that it shouldn't have been made public until he were tested again in the future. 4:1 is only two standard deviations from normal... that does not exclude readings that are higher.
Just as easy as it is to say that they would gamble for that kind of glory... Landis already makes a 6-figure income leading that team. A top-10 finish in the tour is still pretty darn lucrative. I doesn't seem that cheating is an automatic reaction to a bonk.
5044. Macnas - 7/28/2006 3:09:32 PM That's interesting. The people who are writing in his defence are saying that testosterone could not make him cycle faster given the short time span.
It's not that he cycled faster, it was that he was able to cycle as fast as he could on any good day, despite the meatgrinder of a day he had before.
We had a swimmer, Michelle Smith/De Bruin, who was found to have doped on an L.A. olympics medal win. The american press tore right into her straight away, "get yourself and your junky family out of our town" were some of the words used.
I know, like us and Michelle, nobody wants to believe it could be true, but it more than probably is. 5045. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 3:14:30 PM There is plenty of American press that have already damned Landis as well. 5046. alistairconnor - 7/28/2006 3:16:44 PM The think is, iii, that we are in uncharted territory. None of the current pros were around in the days before modern, highly-effective doping started. Lance NEVER had a bad day like Floyd's in seven years (which just isn't humanly possible...) so the guys just don't know how to react.
I'm sure that Floyd's comeback was 90% guts and bravado... Then again, maybe he took other stuff which wasn't detected? 5047. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 3:24:59 PM I hope we find out a believable truth.
As it stands, I'm with his mother. If he took the stuff he doesn't deserve to win.
What really surprises me is that don't take the time to establish baselines for these athletes... particularly the leaders of teams. 5048. alistairconnor - 7/28/2006 3:38:04 PM Yes, that's where the UCI has been completely hopeless. In practice, they have been deliberately turning a blind eye for decades. When they act now, they are doing so reluctantly. In fact they have been driven to it by the justice systems of the principal cycling countries : France, Italy and Spain.
The protocols all exist. The top French riders undergo rigorous ongoing testing, government mandated, to ensure that they don't stray. 5049. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 9:08:32 PM If he cheated... he is a fool
Apparently the mass-spec test is very good.
The next step he can take when he appeals is his last resort: a test called IRNS, or mass spectrometry. Wadler says this test doesn't care about whether or not your body produces extra amounts of testosterone. It's a chemical test that tells us whether or not this testosterone was either introduced from an outside source or if it is naturally occurring. If they go to it and the testosterone is determined to be of exogenous origin, Landis is toast. This [current] test result is not a smoking gun; it's an irregularity. 5050. iiibbb - 7/28/2006 9:09:39 PM What I don't understand is if the mass-spec test is so much better, why the result was released before they have a definative answer. What's up with that? 5051. wonkers2 - 7/28/2006 9:32:33 PM Cap'n Dirty sez, "As I figgered, Armstrong said today he's just a naturally high testosterone guy, (like The Cap'n)." 5052. alistairConnor - 7/28/2006 9:46:40 PM What it is : they only released the fact that one rider had a positive test on that particular stage. The authorities said nothing about who it was. Then Landis abruptly cancelled his scheduled races, so speculation focused on him, and it was his team that finally let the cat out of the bag.
You're right : either he will ask for the definitive test, and we'll know. Or he won't ask for it, and we'll know. 5053. wonkers2 - 7/28/2006 9:58:40 PM My understanding is that all men, except for Saudi harem guards, test positive for testosterone. There is a bell curve range for testosterone level in the blood within which nearly all men fall. Is it not possible that Landis is naturally at the high end of the range. I wonder what the limit is for athletes? I'll try google for more info. 5054. wonkers2 - 7/28/2006 10:11:28 PM All you need to know about testosterone. The normal testosterone range for men is 300-1000 ng/dl. I wonder what Landis's result was? [The Cap'n's is 999.] 5055. alistairConnor - 7/29/2006 5:11:50 PM That's not strictly what they are testing. They are interested in the ratio between testosterone and epitestosterone. If there is not much epi- compared to the T, that is taken to indicate that the T is of unnatural origin.
The silly thing is, it's easy to fool this test by taking both E and T in proportional amounts. This is the sort of test that, in my view, was carefully designed to let cheats get away with it. i.e. it's quite likely that Landis and other riders have been using synthetic T throughout the tour, but masking it by taking synthetic E. So Floyd's reaction, of a man unjustly accused, is quite likely of the good old "everybody does it" variety.
One of the theories doing the rounds is that he messed up the dosage of E on that particular day.
What we don't yet know is the level of T that was detected. Everyone presumes it was abnormally high, as well as out of proportion to the E.
The moment of truth is whether Floyd asks for the mass-spec test, which can distinguish natural T from the synthetic stuff. If he asks for it, we can expect that it will clear him. 5056. PelleNilsson - 7/29/2006 5:39:18 PM But if we look at the plain facts, we have a rider who hit the wall on the last climb of a tough a mountain stage and lost 8 mins. To assume that he could bounce out of bed the next day and win the next tough mountain stage by a minute without chemical assistance is to strain credulity. 5057. alistairConnor - 7/29/2006 6:16:19 PM No Pelle, the history of the tour is full of stuff like that. True gutsy heroics. (well possibly aided by amphetamines, in the good old days.) 5058. PelleNilsson - 7/29/2006 7:44:57 PM That's my point.
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