Saturday, September 29, 2007

Saturday Roundup

News
St Louis Today.com notes that the second Tour of Missouri is scheduled to beging next year with approximately the same dates as it did this year, and that would interfere with the proposed super race the Tour of America. The author, Kathleen Nelson, mentions that the Tour of America is not yet sanctioned by the UCI and the only riders who would participate would be those with time on their hands, such as Floyd Landis.

VeloNews reports that Michael Rasmussen was found to have used Dynepo which is thus far not on WADA's banned substances list due to the fact that it is nearly identical to naturally produced human EPO cells:


Traces of Dynepo, a biosimilar EPO, were found in Rasmussen's urine," AFLD President Pierre Bordry told the Reuters news service on Friday. "Rasmussen's test could not be declared positive because of the positivity criteria of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)."



Currently, the EPO test can be declared positive only if the erythropoietin used is the older version of Epogen. Since Dynepo is made from human cells, WADA researchers said the risk of a false positive is too great since it could be mistaken with human EPO.


The NY Times says that Operation Raw Deal, the huge steroid bust made by the DEA earlier this week, doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem and that someone else will now fill in the gaps left by the recent arrests and destruction of clandestine steroid labs.

Blogs
Rant compares two stories from today on the Rasmussen Dynepo revelation. One version seems to leave out some important information, but both neglect exploration of WHY we even know this information since by WADA rules we should not.

Standard Chuck's View of Everything Around feels that events such as the Landis saga, have tainted sports and we now no longer feel shock when we read about the latest scandal.

Brewers Pub Sports notes that Floyd Landis has lost his tour de France title, after a year of deliberations. No wonder we all feel so tired.

T-Guy J missed a lot while he was on his honeymoon, including the Landis decision. He likely had a lot more fun that the rest of us who missed nothing.

The Science of Sport
reviews several recent doping cases including that of Floyd Landis, and worries about the atmosphere in which we live that could create public apathy about them.

Chicago Bull
talks about promoters trying to stage a Tommy Lee and Kid Rock fight. It got CB thinking about who he would like to see in the octagon and one of the pairings he thought up was Rick Ankeil vs Floyd Landis for the best sports comeback ruined by steroids, keep thinking CB:

In 06' Floyd Landis was a huge success story, and this year it was the reemergence of Rick Ankiel. Both have cheated their way to glory, and now they get to win something they actually have to earn. This fight was over before it began though. Ankiel has 60 pounds on Landis and 3 inches in height (according to perspective websites that I don't believe). Not to mention, Landis probably has been clean now that he still trying to take tests while Ankiel can keep doping up. Ankiel mauls him; Landis cries that he was set up and wants a second fight to no avail

3 comments:

N.B.O.L. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
N.B.O.L. said...

"Since Dynepo is made from human cells, WADA researchers said the risk of a false positive is too great since it could be mistaken with human EPO."

But apparantly the risk of a false positive is NOT so great as to keep Bordry from leaking results to try to further ruin someone's career. When will the various members testing agencies learn that they too must follow the rules.

Unknown said...

"But apparantly the risk of a false positive is NOT so great as to keep Bordry from leaking results to try to further ruin someone's career. When will the various members testing agencies learn that they too must follow the rules."

Not anytime soon. It seems there needs to be an enforced penalty of sufficent magitude in order to get these people to follow their own rules.

The Majority Award from Floyd's hearing did little/nothing to curb the leaking/publication of what is supposed to be confidential information, at least not yet. The hearing itself uncovered and made public a wide variety of rules breaches from WADA,UCI, USADA, and LNDD. At some point, this will come back to haunt them. Perhaps there is not a sufficent critical mass of intelligence wihtin the alphabet soup to realize the pendulum will swing in the other direction, or the key players could be planning to be far away when it happens?