Say it ain’t so, Floyd!
by Mike on Jul.27, 2006, under Cycling
The latest news from France is that recently crowned TdF champ Floyd Landis’ blood tests after last Thursday’s Stage 17 reflected an adverse finding related to testosterone. His B sample will be tested within the next week or so to confirm this finding. Floyd has denied taking testosterone and asked his B sample be tested.
From what I can gather, there is a high degree of variability in naturally occuring testosterone levels, and a number of riders who failed their drug test because of elevated testerone levels have proven it is a naturally occuring phenomena, and had these failed test results thrown out. Floyd has apparently retained the services of a Spanish doctor (NOT Dr. Fuentes of Operacion Puerto fame) to assist with his case.
I hope he is cleared in this matter. It would be highly disturbing (and very dumb) for a contender in the Tour to risk being caught taking banned substances – all stage winners are tested and Floyd planned to win the stage. Particularly after we all marvelled at the effort Floyd made in Stage 17 on that epic day. It would be a real bummer to know that this never say die, come from behind effort was chemically aided.
Unfortunately, this is potentially another black eye on our sport. If he is determined to have doped, he should be stripped of his title and banned from the sport for a couple of years. Fortunately, this will happen if he can’t clear himself since cycling takes a very hard line on doping, which is more than can be said about most other sports.
But whether he is cleared or not, cycling needs to take a hard look at its testing procedures. As noted above, a number of cyclists have proven false positives with respect to testosterone testing. This test needs to be fixed or discarded.
We’ll all be watching very closely, and my guess is that the B sample will return positive, then Floyd will then undergo some endocrinological testing which shows his adverse testosterone levels were naturally occuring and he did not dope. He will then retain the title of TdF champion. However, there will probably be some lengthy amount of time to do this add’l testing which will leave Oscar Pereiro and the TdF champion in limbo, which is a bad thing and is bad for cycling.
Those are my thoughts – where do you stand on this issue?
