Tuesday Roundup

News
The NY Times writes about proffer agreements and other measures used to assist in obtaining cooperation and information for the Mitchell Report.

Reuters UK starts off what will likely be a long list of year end reviews concerning the sorry state of sports in the United States and all of the cheating that's been going on.

The Guardian Unlimited offers sports quotes of the year, and one from Floyd Landis is on the list:

I can sleep well at night knowing that I won the 2006 Tour de France fair and square" -- American Floyd Landis maintains his innocence after being stripped of the title and given a two-year ban for failing a dope test.

The CyclingNews features a number of legal/doping snippets this morning one of which has Patrick Lefevere winning a token award in a defamation case against a politician who insinuated doping was going on at Quick.Step-Innergetic.

The VeloNews also reports on the lifetime suspension of Oil for Drugs doctor Carlo Santuccione:

Italy's Olympic committee has handed down a life-time ban to Carlo Santuccione, the doctor at the center of the "Oil for Drugs" investigation that has involved several high-profile athletes, including Giro d'Italia winner Danilo Di Luca.

A disciplinary panel of Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) on Monday ruled that Santuccione could no longer associate himself with athletes, sporting events or organizations for the remainder of his career because of his involvement in the distribution of performance-enhancing substances. Santuccione had already served a five-year suspension from cycling, starting in 1995.

Blogs
MESO-Rx writes about the "testing loophole" missed by the Mitchell Report and cites none other than Don Catlin who is quoted as saying that deceiving doping controls is not that hard. MESO suggests that MLB players could use a testosterone cream concoction at will since no CIR testing is done that could detect exogenous testosterone:

However, depending on the sport, the CIR test may never be used unless an athlete fails the T:E ratio test. Furthermore, some sports don’t even use the CIR test (e.g. Major League Baseball) In these cases, an athlete can exploit the testosterone loophole in testing.

The “cream” used by BALCO was not a novel undetectable designer steroid or sophisticated method of administering steroids. It was simply a variation of the testosterone and epitestosterone cocktail that had first been used over 20 years ago to fool drug testers.

Pommi is not writing about cycling, or Floyd Landis, but man that's a killer egg nog recipe.