on July 26th, my morning email delivery brought the WCP announcement of the 2006 Tour de France DVD
exciting in the history of the race. What began with a traditional week
for the sprinters, and a bumper crop of thrills and spills, ended with
an unprecedented week of rising and falling prospects for the race
leaders. As we all know, Floyd Landis pulled out the victory with one
of the all-time great rides up the feared Col du Joux-Plane and a
controlled, confident final time trial…”
Which, unless you’ve been out in the back country for a few days, you know was followed by this announcement:
The Phonak Cycling Team confirmed Thursday that
Tour de France winner Floyd
Landis is the rider who
submitted a positive “A” sample following the
17th
stage of this year’s Tour de France.
Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone
during the race, his Phonak team said in a statement
issued Thursday.
The statement came a day after the UCI, cycling’s
world governing body,
said an unidentified rider
had failed a drug test during the Tour.
stood on the victory
podium on the Champs-Elysees,
succeeding seven-time winner Lance
Armstrong as
an American winner in Paris.
I can imagine the thoughts of “oh crap!” as WCP folks read
through their server send reports. (Wonder how many of those
emails go out… )
To their credit, WCP quickly issued a statement from The Voice himself.
But, it’s interesting how quickly the sharks appear in the water.
Already there have been numerous back-and-forths on non-racing forums,
and the traffic on the actual race-geek discussion groups is
frightening. Of course, everyone knows what happened, why the
tests are skewed, how the French are out to get him, how long all the
racers have always been doping…. it always sickens me slightly
to wade through what is the current version of bar debates.
The funny thing is what I get from non-cycling co-workers. For
the most part, they pick up the mis-information and the simplistic
anecdotes. I hear them go on about how cyclists are druggies and the
sport is corrupted. Of course, at that point I do tend to ask them
whether they think Mark McGwire will deign to refuse his place in the
baseball record books.
The point I’m making is that bull-headed comments from Dick Pound
aside, Pro Cycling has done more than any other sport that comes to
mind to deal with doping and performance enhancing drugs. No, I don’t
think it’s clean. But, yes, I do think that they are not afraid
to publically air their dirty linens (and honestly, in advance of final
decisions, which really sucks if you happen to be the beneficiary of
that…). I’d say more, but I’m late for work…
And here’s two stories you won’t hear anything about this week:
Andreu Fired
Afternoon Update -
From the sound of things I’ve been reading, the test gave a
testosterone/epitestosterone ratio of 11:1, where the standard is
4:1. The reports also indicated that the testosterone level was
reasonable, but that the epitestosterone level was quite low. Despite
what most people are reporting, it isn’t like drunk driving where his
testosterone level was “in excess of the legal limit…” It was the ratio that was high.
Here’s an interesting follow-up to a quote regarding the testosterone testing as “impossible to police”
Over at Art De Vany’s place
Here’s an article about testosterone over at VeloNews.