Tuesday Roundup

News
The Cyclingnews in it's real time text race coverage of the ToC today intimates that Landis was at the finish line watching the race today taking attention away from the race at hand.

CNN Money.com tells us the Michigan based Stryker Corp. wants to break into the hip resurfacing market in the US made potentially profitable by the recent success of Floyd Landis' Smith and Nephew hip resurfacing surgery.

The SF Chronicle's Gwen Knapp takes a distanced view of the FFF event held Sunday in SanFrancisco, making comparisons that reflect her longer-lived and local concern with Barry Bonds. She thinks Landis has improved his act:

In the six months since he received word of a positive test for synthetic testosterone from his winning stage at the Tour de France, Landis has learned some new moves. They're rather smooth. He dances a three-step. Explain, attack, smile. Science, politics, humor.

. . .

He wore a suit and tie Sunday evening, and stayed scrupulously on message.

"I blame the leaders of the sport for letting the story get out of control,'' Landis said when asked if he was betrayed by the media.

"It's that the UCI (the cycling federation) and WADA are absolutely incompetent,'' he said, when an audience member asked why the French would be sloppy in their documentation if they had planned to set him up. "... It's not about nationalism.''

Knapp gave attendance of 50 people, less than our guess of 100, but in the range. It did seem surprisingly small, reflecting the apparently non-existent advance machine. The owner of a shop near the upcoming San Jose event wrote us:

It would also have been nice if someone had dropped off some flyers for the event! We got lots of info on the LeMond benefit at Fort Mason, but nothing on Floyd.

The SacBee notes Greg Lemond is present for the ToC, and is commenting on the state of affairs in cycling, including the Landis case:

"It was a horrible thing for Floyd," LeMond said last week in a telephone interview. "But it kind of took something like that to address things. Floyd's obviously the most dramatic. But there's other stuff that's equally bad.

. . .

LeMond said the pressure to cheat didn't really exist when he was on top of the cycling world in the 1980s.

The Stockton Record is excited to see the ToC come to town, but some locals feel sorry that Landis will not be there, and also feel that cycling is being picked on.

Science Daily reports on a Journal article about problems with WADA, seen as likely to drive professionals out of the Olympics.

Blogs
Rant goes over the new information in the slide show given in SF bit by bit, and thinks the inlet pressure variations may be significant to both the T/E and CIR results. He's also found a good description of GC/MS that we'll add to the REFERENCES page.

Jason Sager, who is having his own problems with USADA, watched the ToC on television, and made this aside:

Speaking of which, I thought Floyd did a great interview during the ToC coverage, the best interview so far actually. If there's one thing that USADA teaches you, its how to research and communicate effectively.

Through the Prism can understand how both sides of the Landis issue have come to conclude what they have.

Gilmet tells us that Floyd Landis will soon be joini the spinning class Gilmet frequents in SF for an appearance. They use Cycleops trainers, so it must be a Saris hookup.

Alliwannadoisbicycle was shocked to see himself on the VS piece on the FFF and Floyd Landis on Sunday. He was shown giving Floyd a "Free Floyd" t-shirt at the recent Brooklyn Brewery event.

Forums
DPF discusses the new information from the SF slide show, and isn't sure if operating pressures affect the result. Discussion is waiting for someone more knowledgeable to make an appearance.

There's a new technical discussion about the discrepencies between the screening and confirmation ratios. It looks like a return to the EG/ES issue that has been raised, in ways not directly addressed before.

Thought for the Day

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." -bf-

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