Friday Roundup

News
AP via Yahoo reports an interesting development in Europe -- The CPA pro riders group and IPCT team association are doing something with the with the EU to reorganized the sport, with no mention of the UCI.

The San Jose Mercury News writes about Marion Jones and slips in a snark about Floyd Landis for good measure.

The Herald Sun says that only thing surprising about Marion Jones' confession is that she stopped lying, they then had some choice words for the "superhuman" Floyd Landis:

We found that out with Ben Johnson all those years ago, in 1988 in Seoul, and still we're coming to grips with the sad reality - the better the performance, the less you can trust it.

The last big star to prove that was another American, cyclist Floyd Landis. His superhuman ride in a mountain stage of last year's Tour de France was soon exposed as just another dope-fuelled sham. Landis continues to argue that, but there's little sympathy.

The CyclingNews Friday Mailbag is still buzzing with letters about the Landis decision. Some people agree with it, some don't, but one stands out:

As a professional scientist who has been working in a strict Quality Assurance (QA) environment for the past 27 years, I am continually discouraged by the general public's overall lack of understanding of science and the scientific process. Lest anyone be confused, the Landis decision was not about proving that Floyd had taken exogenous testosterone. What the majority of the panel was concerned with was whether or not the lab had followed the procedures they had established to detect exogenous testosterone. They apparently considered the scientific validity of those procedures to be outside the scope of their investigation, and it was certainly outside their area of expertise.

The unrefuted testimony of Dr. Amory, the only real scientific expert on testosterone to testify, was that those procedures were not adequate to establish the presence of exogenous testosterone. You will note that the majority opinion does not refer to Dr. Amory's testimony - there is no way to reconcile it with the verdict they wanted to reach. So Floyd was found guilty on the basis of one WADA-accredited lab's flawed procedures, procedures that wouldn't even be accepted by other WADA-accredited labs. (For those who have been asleep through this farce, the French lab accepts the presence of elevated levels of a single exogenous testosterone metabolite as evidence of doping, while the US lab at UCLA requires the presence of three.) As Dr. Amory pointed out, exogenous testosterone metabolizes in a defined way, with the levels of metabolites rising and falling through time in a certain pattern. The analyses performed by the French lab of the entire set of Floyd's samples did not show the pattern that would be present if Floyd had, in fact, doped. Dr. Amory's opinion was that they made no sense at all.

Floyd was found guilty through a political process with no basis in science. WADA and the UCI are on a witch hunt, and Floyd was unfortunate enough to fall into their cross-hairs. I'm all for catching dopers and throwing them out of the peloton, but the tests must be scientifically valid and be performed by neutral, qualified analysts, not by a lab eager to break (or is that "make"?) the news for l'Equipe. Some form of equal protection under the law would be nice too, such as all WADA-accredited labs having the same criteria for what constitutes an adverse analytical finding. And since Floyd apparently passed all the same tests Oscar Pereiro and Andreas Klöden were subjected to, how about subjecting them to the same test Floyd supposedly failed before moving them up on the podium? Or doesn't fairness go that far?

All cyclists being coerced into signing that document promising to give up a year's salary if found guilty of doping should be afraid--the deck is stacked completely against them. Bravo to Bettini for refusing to sign.

Rick Beauheim
Carlsbad, NM, USA
Saturday, September 29, 2007

A dedicated googler finds biographical information on Mr. Beauheim:

Rick Beauheim, M.S. is a Principal Member of Technical Staff with Sandia National Laboratories, where he has been responsible for site characterization activities at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site near Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP is an operational low-level DGR located in a deep sedimentary formation at similar depth to the proposed Bruce DGR. For the SCP project, Rick is task leader for the borehole hydraulic testing components of the SCP. He has over 25 years experience in the design and application of deep borehole hydraulic testing procedures for low-permeability formations.

Yup, sounds pretty heavily regulated and monitored.

The CyclingNews also posts French cycling federation (FFC) president Jean Pitallier's concerns about corruption within the UCI.

The VeloNews also opens its' mailbag to letters on subjects from the Tour of America to doping amnesty.

USAToday Sports Scope posts a fee notable sports blurbs from this afternoon, and questions the leap some are making now in linking Floyd Landis to Marion Jones. Thanks for the nice plug by the way.

Blogs
Rant writes about the Marion Jones story, and notes that we will be seeing stories related to doping, and probably Floyd Landis, for at least this news cycle.

June Sayers says that Floyd Landis will NOT be invited to her little bike club's event simply because he's ugly, he's busy anyway. This one gets the "snark of the day".

Suz would be devastated if one of her swimming idols used PED's as Marion Jones and Floyd Landis did.

Every Facet of the Game says winners cheat, and they are always three steps ahead of the law.

WADAWatch finds some fishy and contradictory items in the Landis decision.

Sara Best blogs that Oscar Pereiro is ready to wear yellow, and she goes back and forth on who this is and is not fair to.

Go Faster Jim wonders about Oscar Pereiro's latest comments concerning Floyd Landis and the yellow jersey.

Jamie is bringing back her "Friday Five" and wonder why athletes keep disgracing themselves and their sports.

Yipee Cats says they're ALL on drugs.

Edward J. Renehan Jr. is getting a bit "suspicious" that steroids may indeed have made their way into the competitive chess world.

Rocky Thompson ponders forging Floyd Landis' name on an insulting t-shirt to sell on ebay.