Tuesday Roundup

News
The Boulder Report has all kinds of stuff from the weekend in the wide world of cycling ranging from official types keeping mum on Mary Peter's remarks about bicycles NOT being transportation to the LeMond interview in the Denver Post which Joe Lindsey writes may be nuts OR the truth we don't want to hear.

Pez Cycling News thinks that Landis arb panel may have been kidnapped or something:

Do they get up everyday and talk about Floyd Landis and debate about what will become of him, or do they go about some other day job and think about his ruling before they go to bed?

ESPN Page 2 writes about athletes making stupid choices and throws Floyd Landis in as one of many examples of athletes who have made them.

Blogs
Bryan's Racing Blog threw down fewer calories and rode more including the Reston Century for good measure. He remembers the Landis quote," if you want to go faster, peddle harder", truer words and all that.

TruSports writes about types of sports scandals after thinking about the Michael Vick story and relates them to Buffalo wings and what you might think about when ordering them heat wise. Floyd Landis, along with Vick and Kobe Bryant, is in the hottest group dubbed "Code Atomic" Transcendentally Scandalous:

The Ebola virus of scandals latches itself onto every aspect of our society, provokes a response from everyone and things can get ugly. These usually stem from a single event which branches into a full blown disaster and it's impact extends beyond ESPN and into other non-traditional sports networks. The beauty of these scandals is that they don't even have to involve a high profile athlete as long as it threatens to hang a black cloud over the the landscape of an entire sport.
Characteristics of these sports scandals include a bevy of live press conferences which involve a lot of reveal nothing we didn' t already know except giving us another grasp of the gravity of the controversy at hand. They usually cause normally rational people to become irrational, overreact and to side with either the radicalists or the pacifists...

Ifjeff says he might ride the Shenandoah Mountain 100 this coming weekend and if he does he'll heckle Floyd Landis on the course because there's far too much Landis johnson stroking going on to suit his fancy. Thanks for sharing that image, but we'll pass.

Recovox News reprints Floyd Landis' remarks after the Leadville 100, and posts yet another picture of the now famous Landis bloody raspberry, sounds like the name of a new cocktail.

Snackfight picks this from The Outcast:

Everybody wants me to look them in the eye and say I didn't do it. I'm willing to do that, but really, what does that do? Is that logical to think you can tell by looking into my eyes? I don't think so. The only way that people would ever believe me is to admit it and say that I did it. That's it. Nothing else is ever going to be indisputable.

Cycling Fans Anonymous just notices the Ziegler article from June that tried to make something of Landis' hematocrit measurments. We have been told repeatedly that the portable devices are not accurate, and it's very misleading to look at raw numbers. The only HCT values of real accuracy are those done by real labs as part of a CBC blood draw, and that isn't what the reported values represent.

For example, the very first Google we did on "portable hematocrit instrument accuracy" returned an NIH report that says, "Imprecision ranged from 3.3% to 5.3% for StatPal"

Then, in Clinical Diabetes Mellitus : A Problem-oriented Approach
we read:

In an accuracy evaluation of bedside glucose monitoring [a study] gathered 4517 quality-control results, and found that approximately 58^ of the bedside results were within 10% and 78% were within 15% of the corresponding clinical laboratory result.

three whole-blood meters used to test samples with a wide range of hematocrit and glucose values produced reading that exceeded the 15% maximum acceptable error for 35, 37 and 53% of the samples. Only about 25% of the measurements of these instruments fell within 5% of the measurement obtained by the designated comparison method, and each instrument exhibited a different bias with hematocrit."

Evidently this level of research is beyond the capabilities of those who want to slime Landis at every opportunity. We won't go into the large variances based on hydration, or sitting/standing when drawn.


We Love Bikes has revised the post about 67 (now 69?) days and counting, giving a little slack based on how long it really takes the US Supremes to reach decisions, than tightening it back up because it's not exactly constitutional law.

Sara Best feels sorry for LeMond, showing himself to be an unhappy, bitter man. She thinks

[W]e can all agree that if the issue of the secret motorcycles isn't addressed soon, the sport is never going to recover.

Then she reposts a snark describing the "Tours de France That Greg LeMond Should Have Won (TDFTLSHW)"

The Admire LeMond website takes a rather different point of view,

So... Greg's very low consideration of the UCI is once again made clear here. Another point that I find interesting, and I've been wondering about that possibility when the cases of blood doping were talked about during last Tour -and particularly the fact that autologuous transfusions were undetectable- : wouldn't it be possible to check for needle marks on riders? Of course the exam can seem borderline too invasive, and there's the possibility of simple vitamin injections... Greg suggests to have a control on those injections too. Why not?

Bwana read the LeMond interveiw yesterday and has some concerns about Greg LeMond's objectivity when it comes to Floyd Landis, due process be damned:

Are LeMond’s comments about doping in pro cycling accurate. Most likely. Nonetheless, LeMond has prejudged Landis-so much for any concern about due process. LeMond has effectively said there were no mistakes in the testing, despite the bulk of evidence at the Landis hearing that showed there was more than reasonable doubt that tests were not conducted properly, despite evidence of chicanery, and despite a wild variety of lab standards used to measure testosterone.
But nooooooooooooooooo, LeMond knows Landis is guilty. So certain, he apparently thinks the only way Landis can be cleared is through a “technicality”. He may not have noticed it, but technicalities crop up in life every day…from contracts to criminal trials. Technicalities are there to protect rights…unless you are 100% certain of something.

And thanks for the plug.

STR knows that Leadville is old news, but still thinks that Floyd Landis was pretty amazing coming in 2d place with an injury.

Bruce Michel Review has watched the TdF for a very long time and is not sure if the sport of cycling can pull out of the quagmire it finds itself in now.

Metro Solo reconnoitered the last 50 miles of the SM100 to see what it was like, and he is excited that Floyd Landis ,among others , will be riding on Sunday. Oh, that last 50 miles is hard by the way and musical intervention helps.

Forums
Rec.bicyles.tech chews The Outcast with some interesting comments. Snips:

The article, I thought, casts Floyd as a helplessly, incurably, almost lametably blunt but straight shooter, which would suggest that he would be incapable of maintaining an outright lie for this long. I think that, overall, it works in his favor in the court of public opinion, but I'm not sure that a reader's consensus would bear that out.

Odd. I thought that the article painted Landis as lost, helpless, and suffering. I was left with the impression that he would say anything the came into his head. More to the point, I thought he sounded a bit dumb - which fit just fine with notion that he would do drugs and get caught.

It sounds like our impression of Landis after reading the article is almost completely shared, except for a final bit of interpretation.

Does Landis have zero brain-to-mouth editing power? Are these attacks as calculated as when racing? Are they displaced self-loathing and guilt? Are they righteous rage? Smokescreen?

I guess this is why people should pay shrinks instead of trust newsgroups, and why, as Landis accurately states, no matter what the truth is his image will be forever dubious for as long as he denies doping.