Maybe it was the muesli and the beer

I'd forgotten about this.

During the tour, CycleOps (the power tap people behind Allen Lim) did a whole series of podcasts on Simply Stu, a website they run for Triathletes. One of the running topics (and jokes) was diet and the amount of meusli the riders are fed, and how the recipe was a secret of one of the Seignouirs, revealed in one of the later episodes. The main ingredient of meusli is rolled oats, which is not far off from Free Floyd's "diet can elevate test results", and Tom Fine's, "Hey maybe it was the beer."

Now, some obvious questions are:

• Everybody eats meusli, how come it was only Floyd?
• Didn't the study for the CIR take this into account?

I think a difference might be that Floyd moved from training in the US, near home, to Europe in the run up. Doing so changed his dietary consumption sources completely. Maybe this resulted in some C12/C13 balance alterations. If such a change did occur, I kind of doubt that the studies done in validating the CIR for doping tests took it into account. More likely, it was run on a bunch of athletes in their home environment eating a stable diet.