Wednesday Roundup

News
Still no word about Mayo's B sample results. Racejunkie pointedly notes that if it's negative, delay affects his ability to compete in the upcoming Vuelta.

The CyclingNews has Pat McQuaid's complete response to Greg LeMond's anti UCI remarks given in an interview LeMond did late last week.

We missed this earlier, but CyclingNews on Aug 13 carried a report about the case of Marco Fertonani, an LNDD testosterone positive. CN says that CONI, the first body involved, reccomended a 2 year sanction, after the defense made the following claims:

Fertonani's lawyer presented a report back in July to CONI which detailed the mistakes made by the Châtenay-Malabry lab, the same laboratory responsible for testing Floyd Landis' 2006 Tour de France samples which came up positive for testosterone. This week the 31 year-old released a statement giving more detail about the results of his test, which he insists do not add up to a positive. The press release states that the testosterone:epitestosterone ratio was below the 4:1 limit at 3.1:1, that all metabolites in the IRMS analysis had normal absolute values, that his total amount of testosterone was well below the limit of 200 ng/ml at 8.7.

If we can get a copy of the statement and the lab values, we'll post them. We can't make heads of tails of "all metabolites in the IRMS analysis had normal absolute values", since the IRMS compares delta, not absolute values. The choice of "absolute values" might be a dodge in the defense argument, and we'd need to see what they were, and what the deltas were, to start making an informed judgement.

Blogs
Rant deconstructs what was said in the latest LeMond interview, and detects some internal inconsistencies and unsupported speculation, and unprovable assertion along with some grains of truth. He thinks GL is in way over his head when it comes to dispatching psychological advice.

Cycle Jabber reruns the Colbert Report commentary on Floyd Landis from last summer, and wonders if we will ever get the results from the Landis hearing arbitration panel.

Racejunkie provides us with yet more of his understated opinions with some of them on the Greg LeMond interview from Monday, and thanks for the plug:

Greg claiming yet again that he valiantly tried to save Floyd from gross self-destruction, saying not only that he lovingly advised the deluded boy that your "lie" is "always there, and it works on you and it works on you," but that he can't see how Landis could've made a "morally conscious" decision to ask other people to give him money to defend himself. Jeez, Greg, can't you just wait for USADA to fry him?

Jason at MySpace plans on sweeping Floyd Landis off the Shenandoah Mountain 100 Sunday. Good luck.

CrystalZENmud wonders if the Landis arbitration panel is in violation of WADA article 8 which states that decisions shall be rendered in a timely fashion. Zen also wonders if any undue influences have been brought to bear that have caused the announcement to take so long:

To know this, we would have to know whether the Arbitrators have been interfered with by USADA pressures, or whether outside influences, from perhaps the French Ministry of Youth and Sport (which oversees the former LNDD, the French Anti-doping Laboratory), or WADA itself, have conducted unlawful ex parte sessions?

Pommi "alerts" us that the decision in the Landis vs (the former) USADA hearings are imminent, in this the 14th anniversary of the hearings at the former Pepperdine University:

Monday, May 23, 2021

Murrieta, California (Reuters) - Today marks the 14th anniversary of the ending of the Floyd Landis / USADA hearing at the former site of Pepperdine University; Malibu has since been washed into the Pacific Ocean after the sea level rose more than 4 feet over the past decade. To date, the world and Floyd Landis, 45, are still waiting for the decision of the arbitration panel on Landis' fate and whether he can be finally declared or dethroned the Tour de France Champion of 2006. According to inside sources at the WADC (World Anti-Doping Conglomerate), founded in 2012 from the remnants of WADA and USADA, the decision is expected any day now since Richard McLaren will retire in a week from today.

This is one of the funniest blog entries of the summer, and was much needed. Let's hope it is NOT prophetic.


Dugard called Floyd Landis' cell phone yesterday and thought Floyd's message was less terse. It probably changed when he got his iPhone.

Cycling Under the Influence also picks up the old Ziegler article about hematocrit; we refer you to yesterday's discussion of Cycling Fans Anonymous discovery of the same non-story.

w this, we would have to know whether the Arbitrators have been