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5077. wabbit - 8/5/2006 1:21:37 PM Tour de France champion Floyd Landis' backup urine sample confirmed high levels of testosterone, cycling's governing body said Saturday, raising the prospect that he could lose his title.
Following the results of the "B" sample, Landis was fired by his Swiss team, Phonak. He also faces a two-year ban from USA Cycling, which is responsible for sanctions against the American rider.
The confirmed test sets off what could now be months of appeals and arguments by Landis, who claims the positive finding was due to naturally high testosterone levels. He has repeatedly declared his innocence and vowed to fight the allegations -- and did so again Saturday.
If found guilty, Landis would become the first winner in the 103-year history of cycling's premier race to lose his Tour crown over doping allegations. The title would go to Spain's Oscar Pereiro, the runner-up.
Oh well. Maybe this will help clean up cycling, and even trickle into other sports. 5078. wabbit - 8/5/2006 1:56:56 PM  Tiger Woods birdied three straight holes to take the lead in the suspended second round of the Buick Open, then Brett Quigley birdied the 18th hole after the horn sounded to move into a tie. Woods, 13 under for the tournament, was 7 under with three holes left in his second round before play was stopped because of darkness. He will finish his round early Saturday morning and will start his third round in the afternoon after a break of about 4 hours.
Michelle Wie believed she matched Inkster's even par round of 72 at Royal Lytham but it was turned into a 74 after officials ruled the 16-year-old star made contact with moss in a bunker on her backswing. Juli Inkster's 6-under total of 138 gave her a three-stroke lead over unheralded Silvia Cavalleri of Italy, and halfway to her 31st career title and eighth major. By contrast, Wie seems to have little chance of winning her first pro tournament at the Weetabix Women's British Open. The American teen came into the tournament with high hopes after a second-place finish at last week's Evian Masters, and top-five finishes in her previous four majors. Two rounds of 74 meant a halfway score only three inside the cut and a tie for 37th. Of the other leading contenders in the field, Annika Sorenstam shot a 71 and is five off the lead at 1 under after 36 holes, while Mexico's Lorena Ochoa is 3 over after a 73. Karrie Webb, winner of last week's Evian Masters, had a disastrous 82 and missed the cut by a long way on 14-over 158.
5079. wabbit - 8/5/2006 1:57:20 PM  Chase Utley knew his hitting streak would end sooner or later. He just would have preferred later. Utley went 0-for-5 Friday night in Philadelphia's 5-3 victory over the New York Mets, ending a 35-game hitting streak that tied him for 10th longest in major league history. Utley's hitless night overshadowed home runs by David Dellucci and Ryan Howard that carried the Phillies to their fourth straight win and ninth in the last 11 games. Utley struck out twice and was robbed on his best chance for a hit when Mets second baseman Jose Valentin ranged to his right in the seventh inning, backhanded his grounder up the middle and threw him out.
Jorge Posada's 14th homer broke a ninth-inning tie, and New York rallied for its fifth straight victory, 5-4 over the Baltimore Orioles on Friday night. Chris Ray (1-4) retired Jason Giambi before Posada connected against Baltimore's closer on a pitch that went awry. Mariano Rivera worked the ninth for his 27th save. By finishing his 114th game over two seasons, Rivera guarantees his $10.5 million option for 2007. Scott Proctor (4-2) worked the eighth to earn the win for New York, which had 13 hits and stranded 13 runners.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays employed a shift twice against David Ortiz that had four players in the outfield. The Boston Red Sox slugger beat it both times by hitting the ball over the outfielders. Ortiz had his 25th two-homer game and Curt Schilling threw seven solid innings as the Red Sox beat the Devil Rays 3-2 on Friday night. Ortiz has four hits - all homers - in seven at-bats against Seth McClung (3-11). Schilling (14-4) gave up two runs and nine hits, walked two and struck out four. He became the major leagues' second 14-game winner, joining Detroit rookie Justin Verlander. Boston is without several injured players, including catcher Jason Varitek and outfielder Trot Nixon. Earlier Friday, the Red Sox obtained catcher Javy Lopez from the Baltimore Orioles for a player to be named or cash considerations, as Varitek had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee on Thursday. Lopez entered in the third inning as a pinch hitter for catcher Doug Mirabelli, who twisted his left ankle in the first inning.
MLB scores
5080. wonkers2 - 8/5/2006 10:11:32 PM Let's see if I can make my latest toy work. Here are some pictures from Cap'n Dirty's race last evening. Sailboat race pics. 5081. wabbit - 8/7/2006 3:04:55 PM Very nice - I love your creature photos! 5082. wonkers2 - 8/7/2006 3:42:05 PM Thanks. I don't recall linking any. You must have clicked on some of my other "hubs." HubPages.com, the software site I use, was designed and built by my son and a couple of his buddies. [He didn't get his tech skills from me!] 5083. wabbit - 8/7/2006 5:32:03 PM Ha, of course I did! It's a good site, I found HubPages a month or so ago, can't remember how. 5084. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/7/2006 6:06:52 PM Beautiful shots . . . that make me a bit nauseous as a result of a bad day on Long Island Sound. 5085. wabbit - 8/7/2006 8:00:48 PM 
Bluegrass Cat won the $1 million Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park on Sunday, recording the largest winning margin in the race’s 39-year history. Perhaps the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 26 will be a horse race after all. Bernardini remains the horse to beat in the Travers, but trainer Todd Pletcher said he would go into the race with a lot of confidence.
After Bernardini followed his Preakness win with a scintillating performance in the Jim Dandy on July 29, he appeared to have no equal in the 3-year-old division. That may still be the case, but Bluegrass Cat has clearly blossomed into a formidable opponent for him in the Travers. In his first race since the Belmont Stakes, he won the Haskell by seven lengths and never had an anxious moment from the top of the stretch to the wire.
Bluegrass Cat paid $4 on a $2 bet to win and covered the mile-and-an-eighth run over a fast track in 1 minute 48.85 seconds. The stakes record time is 1:47. Praying for Cash, which is co-owned by the former Duke basketball star Bobby Hurley, held on for second, a length and a quarter ahead of the second choice, Strong Contender.
5086. wabbit - 8/7/2006 8:02:19 PM 
Susan Butcher, a pioneer for women in sled-dog racing who won the Iditarod race four times and influenced the training and treatment of dogs in the sport, died Saturday at a hospital in Seattle. She was 51. The cause was leukemia, said Dr. Jan Abkowitz, the lead physician who treated Butcher at the University of Washington Medical Center.
Butcher was the second woman to win the Iditarod, the annual 1,150-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, but the first to dominate the grueling competition through the Alaskan wilderness. She won three years in a row, from 1986 to 1988, and again in 1990 before retiring from competition to raise a family with her husband and fellow musher, David Monson, in the mid-1990’s. Butcher finished in the top five in 12 of her 17 attempts at the Iditarod from 1978 to 1994.
Among her many achievements, Butcher was the first to summit Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak, with a dog team in 1979.
5087. wabbit - 8/7/2006 8:02:51 PM  As Tiger Woods played keep-away with another lead on the PGA Tour, the gallery at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club greeted the accomplishment with fist bumps and revelry, a scene that has been on steady display for the better part of a decade. Woods notched the 50th PGA Tour victory of his career on Sunday, defeating Jim Furyk by three strokes at the Buick Open and finding new ways to build on a reputation that is hovering over golf once again.
Woods shot his fourth consecutive round of six-under-par 66 to finish the tournament at 24-under 264. He made a personal-best 28 birdies on the week against only four bogeys. And in hoisting a trophy, putting on a jacket or standing next to a giant cardboard check for the 50th time, Woods became the youngest golfer to reach that mark, achieving it in 30 years 7 months 6 days.
5088. wabbit - 8/7/2006 8:03:37 PM  The Florida Marlins held a team meeting that lasted more than an hour after they helped Los Angeles extend its winning streak to nine games Sunday. Baseball's hottest team rallied in a six-run seventh inning that included three consecutive walks, two with the bases loaded, and won 7-3. Los Angeles completed its first series sweep in Miami since May 19-21, 2000.
David Ortiz became the first Boston Red Sox player to hit 40 homers in three consecutive seasons with a fifth-inning shot Sunday at Tampa Bay. Ortiz lined his AL-best 40th homer of the season into the right-field seats off Devil Rays starter J.P. Howell. It was his seventh homer in 63 at-bats off Tampa Bay pitching this year. Only two other Boston players -- Carl Yastrzemski (1967, 1969-70) and Manny Ramirez (2001, 2004-05) -- have hit 40 or more homers in three different seasons. And in spite of Papi's effort, the Red Sox lost 7-6 in the 10th.
Wilfredo Ledezma couldn't have done much better in place of Justin Verlander. Ledezma struck out five in 5 2-3 innings, and the Detroit Tigers took advantage of an error by C.C. Sabathia to beat the Cleveland Indians 1-0 Sunday and complete a three-game sweep.
MLB scores
5089. Max Macks - 8/7/2006 8:52:03 PM wabbit , any chance at all that the decision
to take away the title from Landis will be reversed?? 5090. iiibbb - 8/7/2006 8:59:56 PM I would say the odds are less than 30% he'll get it reversed. 5091. iiibbb - 8/7/2006 9:05:31 PM He's in the position of having to prove innocence. So he will either have to show willful negligence on the part of the testing facility... or he will somehow have to prove that it was natural.
The glitch with the ratio is that according to some reports his testosterone was not high, his epitestosterone was low, which also drives the ratio up.
The glitch with the carbon isotope analysis is that according to some reports he was close (but over) to the threshold for failing that test. There was some question about the certainty of the value.
How he passes several tests prior... and several tests after is a big question. I think they should be doing carbon isotopes on the previous and prior samples. If you saw a spike then that would be a pretty good indicator.
He's not going to get off on circumstantial evidence though. 5092. wabbit - 8/7/2006 10:23:05 PM iiibbb is right. There may well be a problem with the tests. But claiming innocence and whining about how he has been picked on isn't going to sway anyone in a position to be helpful. The maillot jaune hasn't been taken from Landis yet, but imo, it is just a matter of time. That will effectively end his career. 5093. alistairconnor - 8/8/2006 10:56:58 AM It's terribly unfair for Floyd : I'm convinced that he's the cleanest winner of the Tour for at least ten years.
I may be wrong, but I'm sticking to my original impression that he used testosterone out of desperation on that one occasion to help recover from a disastrous day, and to give him the drive to counter-attack.
Whereas the EPO era, and the more sophisticated forms of blood doping of recent years, were far worse. 5094. iiibbb - 8/8/2006 2:44:23 PM I don't know if it will end his career or not. Say he was really actually clean... his surgery goes well... he comes back in 2 years and could win the tour in 2-5 years clean as can be.
LeMond's theory is that he was basically clean, but made a bad decision the night after his bad day. 5095. wonkers2 - 8/8/2006 3:41:46 PM That makes sense to me--i.e. bad decsion after a bad day. He may have gambled or gotten advice that he would go undetected. 5096. iiibbb - 8/8/2006 4:24:52 PM Either way the UCI is going to have to go through the motions of stripping the title... fair or not. Landis will have to collect his case and appeal the decision. It's a tall order. The UCI can't exactly afford any more egg on their faces after botching this case.
It's quite analogous to one of us suing the gov't.
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