Something doesn’t add up in the Floyd Landis doping allegation. Landis is tested numerous times during the Tour and the results were all negative. Then, once, after the 17th stage, he tests positive. Why, if the affects of steroid use would enhance performance only after use “over weeks,” as indicated by Dr. Wadler, would Landis take the substance when it apparently could do no good during the Tour? Considering the tensions over Lance Armstrong, is there a rat hiding somewhere in all of this?
"But Landis denies using testosterone to enhance his performance after falling behind in the 16th stage. In his words, “Nobody in their right mind would take testosterone just once. It does not work that way.”
After this scandal broke, I read an interview in a major publication with a physician described as knowledgeable about testosterone and physical performance (sorry, can’t recall the name). He refuted the idea that a single episode of taking testosterone would have no effect, including a description of personal experience that included a short-term jolt of well-being and energy.
Whether this was enough to propel Landis to his extraordinary stage performance is another matter.
I was also under the assumption that the lab in question tested samples without their being identified by name (numbers later being matched to the individual in question). So if the idea is that the lab engaged in hanky-panky, Landis’ supporters need to explain just how that came to be.
I’ve looked, but can’t find anything that supports that a one time use, just before an event, enhances performance. I’d like to see that if you are able to recall that name or source later.
I have been wondering if some well meaning but truely stupid trainer spiked something that Landis took.
It just does not make sense that he would take the drugs just after the 16th stage unless the medical reports I’ve seen have been wrong and one dose really will help or Landis is really stupid. I am assuming that what I have read about the effectiveness of single use streroids is correct and that a single dose won’t really help. About Landis just being really stupid, I don’t know. It seems like he knows enough to know that a single dose won’t help.
Ahem, without paging Princhester, I’ll copy a link that he’s thrown around a lot.
Note, this article was written before the Landis positive broke. Basically, a few people claim that it delivers psychological effects in addition to some helpful recovery effects.
I think this is the article I saw concerning one-time testosterone use and its effects (the expert quoted is apparently a PhD toxicologist, not a physician).
When we start speculating on the purported benefits of the banned substance, we are close to discussing the “Booze-Steroids” dichotomy (aka Ruth-Bonds):
If we penalize athletes for using drugs that enhance their performance, should we spot them points for using drugs that detract from it?
After thoroughly reviewing all of the vailable information I ascertain the following:
[ul]
[li]If an athelete is taking synthetic testosterone then he can “fool” the test by also ingesting epitestosterone in quantities that will keep his/her T/E ratio below the magic 4:1 limit.[/li][li]The only failed result is if the T/E ratio exceeds 4:1[/li][li]If the T/E result is below a 4:1 ratio then the carbon isotope testing is not performed on the sample.[/li][li]Landis got drunk the night of his horrendous performance in stage 16.[/li][li]Landis failed to take his dose of epitestosterone that night or the following morning and thus caused the short term high T/E ratio which then led to the fact, by virtue of the carbon isotope test, that he was ingesting synthetic testosterone.[/li][li]LANDIS GOT CAUGHT[/li][/ul]
[li]Landis got drunk the night of his horrendous performance in stage 16.[/li][/QUOTE]
Landis had one beer and I sincerely doubt that if he was on a careful regime to maintain proper T/E ratios he would forget to do that due to a single been.
Furtermore, my scanning of the literature suggests that T tends to be metabolized faster than E so for your analysis to be correct he would actually have to be drunk enough to remember to use his T but to forget his E.
Furthermore, if he actually were doing that, why wouldn’t he just intermix T and E and use that?
Really basically, I strongly doubt that your scenario is the correct one:
“Administration of E. Anecdotal reports suggest that E is
used as an emergency measure to rapidly lower a T/E
that is above-normal as a result of T administration. E is
not available in a pharmaceutical dosage form but it is
available as a chemical. For this reason the IOC Medical
Commission classified E as a urine-manipulating agent,
set 150 mg/L (520 nmol/L) as the threshold for reporting
cases, and later changed the threshold to 200 mg/L (693
nmol/L). In our opinion the threshold should be higher:
We often encounter cases in the 150–200 mg/L range. In
the future we expect that the CIR technique might be
useful for detecting E administration. The two highest E
concentrations we have encountered in urine samples
were 1200 (4.16 mmol/L) and 1550 mg/L (5.20 mmol/L).
Perhaps the ideal doping agent would be a combination
of T and E designed to deliver T and E in a ratio of
;25:1, i.e., the ratio of production rates of T and E in men
[42]. In theory, this might produce a T/E of 1:1 and
therefore produce false-negative test results while allowing
administration of T. In practice, the dosing regimens
do not always lead to T/E ,6:1, and the formulations are
cumbersome to prepare. Moreover, Dehennin [42] proposes
to detect this scheme by measuring the ratio of T
and E to 5-androstene-3b,17a-diol, a precursor of E, and
Kicman et al. [19] have shown that the T/LH ratio is high
after administration of combined T and E.”
It’s hard to see how he could’ve been framed. And I’ve heard testimony from so-called experts that testosterone doping can aid in recovery after a very hard workout-- which Landis certainly had in stage 16. I’ve been following cycling for a long time, and these guys dope like there’s no tomorrow. I’m more inclinded to believe the story than to not believe it. Maybe he didn’t expect to win stage 17, thinking he wouldn’t be tested, but got carried away once he started putting distance between himself and the race leader. I think we’ll be seeing Perero in yellow for the prolog in '07.
Okay, so I read what you wrote and although I conceed to being wrong about the amount of alcohol consumed (which actually helps Landis’s case in terms of the alcohol explanation), but what I gathered from that article is that they’re largely dismissive of the possibility.
Furthermore, the aparent kinetcs of the hormones are different where you would actually take them in a 25:1 ratio to produce a 1:1 ratio in a urine test. This suggests that testosterone is both created and metabolized much faster in homeostasis and that epitestosterone levels are very stable.
Given that testosterone has a half life of around 6 days, that would yield an epitestosterone half life of the order of a month or so. What’s the conclusion: getting drunk and forgetting a single dose of epitestosterone will not yield a positive result of 11:1 when you have non-positive results of less than 4:1 bookending that positive test on the time scale of a few days.
Perhaps you would like to clarify your argument further.
I remember Ben Johnson claiming his water had been spiked too. Of course, it turned out he had been doping for years. The screw up was in getting caught.
Didn’t the test find synthetic testosterone? Unless that test can be refuted, I think that pretty well does it.
They only defense against that is to claim you were tricked into taking it with a spiked water bottle, or malicious physiotherapist applying steroid cream or whatever. If that defense is allowed then you might as well just stop testing for illegal drugs. So it isn’t a valid defense. It’s the athlete’s responsibility to take whatever measures are required to protect himself from un-intentionally ingesting illegal substances.
Seems pretty simple to me- he had fallen 8-10 minutes off the lead, was desperate to try anything to get back in contention, maybe thought he was using
something that wouldn’t show up, and was wrong. If they were out to get him, why didn’t they get Lance Armstrong, who they have been wanting to “get” for years? Because you obviously can’t tamper with the testing process.
Is there an athelete in the history of doping testing who has proven that a positive test was a result of sabotage or tampering? I don’t think there is.
While not a case of sabotage or tampering, I believe that Lance had a positive testosterone test in one of his early TDF’s that was due to the use of an approved medicine he was using for “saddle sores”.
I was really jumping on the Floyd bandwagon during this years race and was impressed with all of the stories concerning his training and his hip. Unfortunately, I think we have all been duped into the “Floyd was framed” tact that he seems to be headed down.
According to Floyd he was tested four times before his Stage 17 win and three times after at the TDF and all of the others had shown T/E ratios below 4:1. His passing (having T/E ratios less than 4:1) on the other seven tests could be explained by masking the synthetic testosterone with doeses of epitestosterone.
It is my understanding that elevated levels of testosterone, by itself, is not a cause for a positive result. If this is correct then the T/E ratio is the first screening with carbon isotope testing serving as a follow up when T/E exceeds the 4:1 ratio with regard to testosterone.
Because blind testing is done in the lab (despite Floyd’s lame excuse today that someone at the lab was out to get him), it seems that tampering or sabotage is highly unlikely.
If it is indeed so easy to fool the T/E test by using epitestosterone, then it seems logical that the anti-doping labs and sport federations just use the carbon isotope testing for synthetic testosterone as the basis for proving doping?
Actually, if you’ll recall that little scandal from August of 2005 this is the lab that carried out tests on the 1999 Tour samples and then leaked the fact that Armstrong did have six “positive” EPO tests from the 1999 Tour. I put positive in quotes becasue the science behind testing such old samples is controversial although I tend to doubt that long term storage at -80 C would produce false positives.
Armstrong vigorously defended himself by saying that the leaks were entirely inappropriate (and they were inappropriate) and that nothing could be done because they already were testing the “B” sample.
A report from the UCI and some others chastened the lab heavily for being loose with test results, and apparently they still are in the habit of leaking adverse test results inappropriately.