Urine TROU-ble! Day 4
We have facts and figures!
According to Michael Butcher’s article in The Scotsman, Landis’ A-sample T/E ratio was 11:1. That’s a bit more than the 4:1 limit. I don’t know if it’s astonishingly high for failed T/E tests or not.
Meanwhile, Velonews quotes a Spanish cyclist who has written extensively about doping in the sport as saying that, contrary to many press reports, testosterone can give riders an immediate short-term boost:
“Its effects are felt almost immediately,” [Jésus] Manzano wrote. “It gives you a lot of force and produces a sort of euphoria.”
Manzano outlined three ways to take testosterone during a competition.
Click through and you will learn them. I don’t know Manzano’s reputation, so I’m doing what we do these days: five minutes’ Googling. Here’s a Manzano interview with Cycling News from 2004. Here’s a story about Manzano’s cooperation in the Spanish Puerto Scandal of this spring.
Various stories say we could have the B-sample results as early as Monday, depending on European holidays.
Comment by Alex R —
July 31, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
Up until now, I’ve been in the ”Believe Floyd” camp.
But also in the Butcher story is this: ”The International Olympic Committee laboratory at Châtenay-Malabry also carried out a carbon isotope test which confirmed that the testosterone present in Landis’s body was not a product of his own system, but was synthetic.”
If this story is correct that the CIR test was positive — and I haven’t seen this anywhere else in the press — then I think I have to move from the ”Believe Floyd” side to the ”Floyd’s a doper” side… The Carbon Isotope Ratio test seems to be the only way to really distinguish between natural and synthetic testosterone.
(Added: cyclingnews.com also says that L’Equipe reported that an isotope ratio test was positive — this is probably the source for the Scotsman report.)
Comment by Andromeda —
August 1, 2006 @ 7:33 am
Alex: the IRMS is the best test available, but…that particular lab also had a blisteringly condemnatory report lodged against it for its…hmm…I guess you could summarize as ”aggressive pursuit of truthiness and being in bed with WADA.” Google ”Vrijman report.”