Friday Flip Flop
Quote of the DayIn the frustration that the increasingly negative press has brought to bear, we are using some drug tests that may not be ready (link)
Tour Story Changes, AP report in IHT also here, here, and in VeloNews (which adds details) says TWELVE other riders tested positive at the tour, unlike all previous reports. They were covered by Therapeutic Use Excemptions (TUEs) from the UCI. Pierre Bordry, the anti-doping official quoted, tries to blame the UCI for handing out TUEs like candy, and insists Floyd had no TUE for Testosterone. There were 105 riders total tested in the tour, and 60 had TUEs. None of the tests for Floyd are reported to have turned up the cortisone he did have a TUE to use though he was tested 8 times over the race.
[originally...]
Let me get this straight: 60% of 105 says they should have found 63 riders with stuff in their tests from their TUEs. But they only found 12 of those, and none of them seem to have been Floyd.
[with correct math...]
Let me get this straight: 60 of 156 starters is 38%; 38% of 105 says they should have found 39 riders with stuff in their tests from their TUEs. But they only found 12 of those, and none of them seem to have been Floyd.
Our anonymous tipster thinks I'm "grasping at straws" in the previous paragraph, and stands by his previous predictions that Landis blood doped, Ullrich is toast, and Basso walks. On the other hand, our friend the Ranter takes my puzzlement above even farther than I'd take it.
Sandra, my attorney (sitting next to me on the sofa) asks, "Why would they feel the need to release this now? What pressure are they feeling to make them come out with this?" Darned good questions. Maybe it was about to leak in some other way, and Bordry wanted to get out front of the issue and say it is all the UCI's fault. That doesn't explain the lies that Floyd was the only positive at the Tour. Maybe they were trying to pre-empt the news coverage Floyd's response to the original charges. They had to know it was coming.
Also discussed at tdfBlog, w/TBV plug.
German Financial Times report, machine translated, though brief, catches the lie.
Reaction to Demand for Dismissal
Get out the popcorn, Podium Cafe picks up BikeBiz and plugs TBV, enjoying watching Dick squirm.
Wait and see, from posters on DP Forum. Jacobs always talks this way, then loses, they say.
Incoherency, from a blogger, Banshee. I don't get his point.
Google news is blanketed with duplicates of the "Floyd expecting good news" interview story, and with the "Lawyers ask for Allegations to be Dropped" report attributed to VeloNews. (sigh). This is good -- they got two big duplicated stories in one day. Unfortunately, they are competing with the equally duplicated "13 riders tested positive" piece.
Allen Lim comments found
Appears on VeloNewsTV, Aug 7 (look for it); Believes in process thinks it will work out, not much worried; comfortable with what they did at the Tour was good and clean, and that's what matters to him. Says Morzine was perfect stage for Floyd's capabilities, and goes over the same things he touched on in his CycleOps posting, date unknown. He was also on the Simpy Stu podcast on Jul 31, right after the AAF. Long tech talk about Morzine and time trial, then into allegations: Huge surprise, result was T/E report, not exogenous. Immediate reaction was that it's an unreliable test, wait for B sample, lab ethics problems, best not to speculate. He knows Floyd, doesn't believe it. He was with Floyd a lot during the tour, Floyd very competitive, but very relaxed, simple, humble. Says he and Robbie are just so bummed, because he couldn't have done it. About 30 minutes in, Lim says he asked point blank and Floyd said, "No." [thanks to emailers for links]
Elsewhere...
LA Times Columnist apologizes to Jones, then says Landis is still guilty. What was that advice they gave Floyd? Oh yeah, "when you are in a hole, stop digging."
Landis seems unlikely consipiracy target, says blogger, who thinks the opposite of Jones.
Body Building Guru reviews case, in good objective detail. Still hopeful.
GorF, ex-Mercury teammate, retiring; from CyclingNews.
Mistake or Sabotage, concludes attorney blogger, plugs TBV.
Pound sends the boys to rough up Catlin, over Jones. Washington Post indicates the Lab is owed a friendly little visit. LNDD quaking in fear of the Piranha Brothers arrival.
[updated Sep 9 23:17 to fix math, oops.]
7 comments:
Still confused - In the article it quotes Pierre as saying, "He added that Landis did not have a certificate allowing him to take testosterone."
This quote would lead one to believe that Floyd took Testosterone, but I thought that the results were that Floyd's T/E ratio was off because of the low E, not the High T. This would show that he didn't take Testosterone.
The more I read and the more I hear, I sense that Floyd will not be able to clear his name unless an independent group intervenes.
Thanks for this blog!
Griggs
I think you may have caught a floundering rat in a logic trap.
TBV
...holding on to straws you are...
only becasue a rider doesn't have a certificate, doesn't mean he is actually taking the medication. That explains the 60% of 105 vs only 13 positive tests.
I stand by what I said earlier and what is the word in pro cycling community: Ullrich banned for life, Basso to Discovery after not enough evidence (why do you think he is not doing a DNA test - it would provide the evidence that is lacking...), Landis used a tainted blood bag.
I see nothing inconsistent in riders with TUEs not testing positive. A high false negative rate (failing to find cortisone in Landis, for example) is undesirable but okay; it is the false positive results that are evil.
All tests have a potential for false positives. We do not know what that rate is for the test used to incriminate Landis. Is it 1 in a hundred or 1 in a billion? Knowing the answer would help me decide whether I believe Floyd or not.
I am inclined to agree,which is why I think Rant took it further than it deserved to go. Still, I find the failure to ever detect Landis's cortisone to be puzzling. He must have had enough in him to get a lame horse galloping. Do they not test for cortisone?
I dont' think we'll know anything about various details until Monday, when at least the filings should be available.
TBV
I have a question. If Landis was given synthetic testosterone of the same kind they claim was found; enough to raise it to the level they say he had in him at the end of stage seventeen, would it be all gone in the test the next morning (which it was)or would there be any residual amounts found? I have a feeling this guy is innocent. Who is testing the testers anyway?
I don't think anyone is using that doping scenario. The two that make the most sense are
(1) he blood doped before S17, and used some blood from training that had tainted contents;
(2) he was on an ongoing program and under-did his additional epitestosterone that would be used as a masking agent.
The testers are supposed to undergo a quarterly proficiency test, described in the posts from last weekend, I forget which.
TBV
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