My uncle and aunt are both big cycling fans and trained medicos: one’s a doctor, the other a nurse. They both maintain that Floyd Landis was being wrongly accused. Their argument is that his tests for steroids were only positive for a single day, which might indicate that Landis only took a single dose. However, they continue, steroids don’t work that way. A single dose wouldn’t improve your performance.
That seems logical to me, but I’d like to run it by the TM. Were his tests only positive for a day? If so, is it true that wouldn’t have given him any boost?
He was accused of taking synthetic testosterone, which although it is a steroid, it’s not like the ones you usually think if. It is thought to aid in the recovery process, and he did have a “miraculous” recovery after a bad day. My theory is that he wasn’t supposed to win the stage (and therefore would likely to not have been tested), but things didn’t go as planned and he got caught
The more usually doping efforts by cyclists is EPO, which increases the red blood cell count in the blood.
I know a lot of professional cyclists, and I know these top pros dope. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I think Landis is guilty.
You might want to ask for this to be moved to the pit, as this discussion will probably get very heated very quickly.
We discussed this over at the tour de France thread. Trust but Verify blog has excellent coverage.
I would urge you to read the dissenting opinion by Christopher Campbell the third member of the panel
Yes, I should clarify, I’m not interesting in debating whether Landis did it or not. I only want to know if it were true, could it have given him an advantage. In that vein, John’s answer was useful, but I’m still not sure what “aiding in recovery” means.
He had a very bad day in the mountains in the previous stage-- he just died on the climb. So, the theory goes, he decided to get a little help from his friends and, miraculously, shook it off to not only do well the next day, but win the stage.
If you’ve ever “bonked” on a bike or while running, you’ll know what it’s like. (No, it’s not a sexual term.) Your body has used up all the glycogen stores in your muscles and liver. I’ve had it happen to me a few times, and you just can’t pedal another stroke-- especially if you stop. You generally don’t perk up the next day and beat all the cyclist to the top.
Muscle recovery (for one). If I biked 100k today, I would be really tired tomorrow and wouldn’t be able to ride like that again for days. A steroid would help all my aching muscles heal faster and I could get back in the bike a lot sooner.
Well, the answer is that there is no definitive, for sure answer. There’s never been any type of randomized, placebo controlled test of testosterone’s ability to affect cycling ability. A lot of people have theories that go back and forth on it. Some might say, “it’s an anabolic steroid, taken during recovery during the Tour it might provide some recovery benefit,” others would say, “it’s an anabolic steroid and will therefore harm ones performance during racing, but it might be useful in the off-season,” and so on.
So, no one knows if it really makes you faster or not. That said, there are assuredly dopers that believe that testosterone would make them faster and a significant portion of the confirmed dope-busts (admissions or found actual doping products, not arguing back and forth over T/E ratios or the IRMS data) in cycling in recent years have indeed involved testosterone. So, there’s certainly a significant population of potentional dopers that thinks testosterone would be beneficial to their speed so it’s possible that Landis could have been among that population.
From what I read, Landis did not bonk, he dehydrated. I know for a fact that you can recover from dehydration overnight. I dehydrated at the start of the Pikes Peak Marathon, because the I didn’t have enough in the morning, and they were being sparing with the water at the start due to a drought. At the summit, I drank my fill, and drank a lot on the descent, and was fine for the bottom two thirds of the descent. If an amateur runner can recover over the course of 4-5 hours, a pro bicyclist can overnight.
It is also controversial whether a steroid can help you overnight. Conventional wisdom is that it can’t. But, there are those who say it can. I don’t know how a steroid would help overnight.
FWIW, I think it is absurd that he could have passed so many tests, and the only test he failed is one in which they can’t even prove it was his sample. (Now, was he guilty, well that’s another question.)
At the time (and I haven’t followed this), I heard speculation that his masking agents weren’t properly administered that day.
That is. . .he didn’t just get his steroids THAT DAY, like some people think, but rather they screwed up giving him the stuff that is supposed to confound the test.
And, furthermore. . .who knows what kind of stuff some of these teams and atheletes might be privy to that isn’t in the medical literature. Maybe he was taking something that shows up on that testosterone test but is some kind of “quick acting” testosterone, or something else entirely but registers on that test as testosterone.
Well, I don’t know many doctors, but I do know a lot of athletes. I here things both ways. I also don’t believe it can be masked well. In order to hide it, you have to sequester it so that it can’t do any good.
The most likely explanation I’ve heard is that if he truly was doping, perhaps he had taken steroids in the off season, his body sequestered it in his body fat, and it was released as he broke down fat over those two days.
Personally, I think Landis was probably innocent. (And, I think Lance probably doped, and that perhaps the whole tour did in the 90’s.)
There is too much doping and corruption in bicycle racing and the Olympics for me. I have boycotted both. A bicycle is for transport or recreation. All competitive cycling
should be banned.
He was positive only for exogenous testosterone on that day, but the results were spectacularly positive.
We don’t have or do good formal studies to see whether or not a single huge dose of testosterone confers an adantage, even if it is simply a mental advantage. Certainly you are not going to change muscle mass, etc., with a single dose.
His test was clearly positive and definitely not a possible normal variant.
Either his test was totally screwed up–tampered with, e.g.–or else he was administered a huge dose of testosterone that day.
He is being banned for illegal doping; whether or not it helped him is not relevant.
I have no idea whether or not Mr Landis is culpable. If the assorted folk testifying that the lab was incompetent were the same ones at the OJ trial, you can toss out the folks crying foul. But maybe in his case the lab really did screw it up or tampered with it.
I suspect underneath all of this is some non-official corroborating evidence that doesn’t pass legal muster but that helps in the decision-making–i.e. it’s sort of widely known who is cheating and how, even if the potential snitches won’t snitch in court. Obviously just my personal, incompetent, uninformed inappropriate hearsay guess.
Note that cycling problably tests more for in and out of season abuse of drugs than almost any other sport.
Yes it has a poor reputation, but don’t imagine for one moment that other top sports are a whole lot better.
Certain world team games that generate huge amounts of money seem to have an incredibly leaky testing system, by that I mean that the players seem to know when the testers are coming around.
Even darts and snooker are not immune to drug abuse.
This does not justify drug taking in cycling, but don’t forget to look a bit more closely at the systems and mechanisms in other sporting fileds, why, its as if they test but don’t actually want to find anything.
We went over this subject at the time. There is not a lot of information out there on how testosterone might help, but on this page Dr Moosburger, sports doctor, says:
However, you’d have to say there is not a lot of information out there on the subject. In a couple of years of discussing what benefit Landis may have got from the testosterone he has been found guilty of taking, this is the only cite I’ve seen.
Among others, Lance’s wife stated that Lance asked his doctor if his doping may have caused his cancer. To be that much better than his competition, when pretty much all of the prime competitors have been busted, is more than suspicious to me. The rumors surrounding him have identifiable origins and are not of the “I heard it from my ex-sister’s 5th cousin once removed’s butcher that …” They come from guys in the cycling community who have stood up and made specific claims. Plus, from what I’ve heard, and I know someone who dated him long ago, he certainly has the personality to dope and be smart enough to get away with it. Maybe he was clean, and was just that much better than everyone else doping or not, but I tend to doubt it.
Landis, and his entire team, would have to have pulled a real OJ in order to get busted like he did. The top guys got busted by outside investigations and suspicious behavior - not by positive tests. They all know to do it well in advance of an actual, tested race, now that testing is routine. And, his total testosterone level was well within normal range. The results are suspiciously weird , there is no known mechanism for overnight doping to have helped him, and the lab was no where near within protocols that were set up for sound reasons. If he did dope, I think his friend who committed suicide might have spiked his food, and realized afterward that he ruined his friend for no good reason. Or maybe he and his team pulled an OJ. But like I said, I lean to innocent and f*ed over.
What is relevant is did the lab do the tests correctly? If they banned an innocent man due to the labs error, this is as bad if not worse than not catching a person who is doping IMHO. The evidence I have seen says that the lab is a bunch of arrogant incompetent idiots. Chief Pedant If this subject interests you, read the Trust but Verify blog. Learn about the case. I think you will find that you may find your mind being changed. Princhester I understand what your cite is saying, and I tend to agree with it, but in the Floyd’s case his testosterone level was not high, it was smack normal. It was his epitestosterone level that was low, throwing the ratio out of whack. I am unaware of any drug that would leave the testosterone level normal, and depress the epitestosterone level.