Tuesday Roundup

They look up to Floyd in Lancaster

News
The Yale Daily News Nicholas Thorne asks if any if us would "juice" up if we felt it necessary for success? He worries about the poppy seed bagel he ate before a recent drug test, and in a bit of a snark thinks that this constant need to win at all costs may be why Floyd Landis cheated if indeed he did:

Now take Landis. His is a compelling testament to the power of living in another’s shadow. Faced with hundreds of miles of grueling competition and weighed down by the burden of America’s expectations, ol’ Floyd decided a little testosterone was all he needed to win the Tour de France and step out from Lance Armstrong’s shadow. He was right.

When called on it, Landis just pointed fingers and looked over his shoulder, as if to say, “Who? Me?” The result: No one is yet sure as to what type of indiscretions Landis participated in, and some, if not all, are probably willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Blogs
Potholes and Roadapples got an exclusive interview with Landis, under the title "Floyd Landis Challenges the Emperor."

But no other athlete has so aggressively maintained his innocence. Even if they are innocent, Landis believes other athletes have looked at the cost of defending themselves — Landis expects to spend more than $2 million — and they have accepted the suspension.

Landis faces being stripped of his title and a two-year ban from the sport. The lack of challenge is why the USADA has 158 notches on its gun, Landis believes. “Of course, now, they come into it with this arrogant attitude, like we’re just going to stomp all over this guy, like we do every other time. … Sooner or later, they were going to pick the wrong guy,” he said in an exclusive interview.

“How many can you go through before you find a guy who is just not going to take it.”

Mark was not only impressed with the Dr. Baker's slide show Sunday night at the FFF event in Ephrata,PA, but also with the wonderful people who live there. And even though he is a photographer and took pics of everyone else with Floyd, he discovered that he doesn't have one with Floyd and himself. Doh!

Paul Landis watches his son sign autographs.
More pictures by Mark

Dugard thinks about the case again, and hears "wiki defense" for the first time.

Cheeky Bastard is looking into hip replacement and is starting to think about the Birmingham Hip Resurfacing procedure. In his research he found that Floyd Landis has more in common with Barry Manilow than you might think!

Potholes and Roadapples thinks that AOL Fanhouse was not only way snarky, but also inaccurate. Also

AOL Fanhouse article deconstructed by P and R above.

Matt was very excited to finally get the chance to meet Floyd Landis at the Saturday night casual event in Ephrata,PA. He felt that what you see is what you get with Floyd, and he found that Floyd was gracious and humble. He also got to meet and speak with other people involved with the FFF.

Bicycle News says don't write Floyd Landis off yet, he still has plenty of fight left in him. The link to "more" seems broken however

Durham in Wonderland rips the media for coverage of the Duke Lacrosse case, then misrepresents the Landis defense, seemingly blind to the similarities.

Forums
At DPF, after having conferred with Arnie Baker in Lancaster, Duckstrap is extending some of the observations made by You3 about errors in the CIR execution:

Just to add further fuel to the speculative fire, I will point out that metabolites of cortisol have four acetylation sites, instead of the two found on metabolites of T. The number of carbons in cortisol metabolites is 21 vs. the 19 in T metabolites. If a peak containing primarily cortisol metabolites were a significant contaminant or were misidentified, then because of the highly negative CIR of the acetic anhydride used for derivitization (-53 per p. 351), a cortisol metabolite with a corrected CIR of -24 would have an uncorrected value of -32 in the IRMS, exactly in line with the observed CIR of the mystery "5bA" in the Landis F2 sample, and with the putative "5aA" sample in his F3 sample.

Tom Fine's revisiting possible effects of alcohol on CIR is now available, with additional citation, and some support from Dumas and jr.

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