I didn't miss it. And in fact if you had simply said "Floyd Landis is an american who doped, yeah we have dopers in hungary too" I would not have taken issue.

But you went on to say:
I don't think our massive scientific resources devoted to doping are really all that massive as a percentage of our total scientific resources. So like someone said before, quit stereotyping. I know I know, it's cool to hate america... but it's hard to take the moral high ground from this direction.

i feel sorry for those who can't distinguish between being critical of someone's actions and hating them.

i get very angry at those who recognize the distinction but choose to ignore it.

so, how bout those singlespeed and fixed gear bikes?

guess i should have added the preposition "on" to my statement of "it's cool to hate -on- america. That way, you wouldn't have to be angered over semantics.

yeah, sorry dude that was unduly harsh.

and, i think you meant syntax

What I find incredibly funny in all of this, and a bit ironic, as it points to the mindset of these guys,
is that Tyler Hamilton

is still maintaining his innocence

(after his name came up, again, in that Spanish doctor thing)

i've lost faith in tyler, even though i supported him in the beginning. swearing on his wife's life and his dog, tugboat... c'mon. i thought it was tugboat that told him that it was only doping if you were using someone else's blood.

as for floyd, of course he has more testosterone. he's got twice as many testicles as lance.

I am going to reserve judgement until the B sample results and/or a doctor's examination determining whether his testosterone levels are indeed above normal. Yet, I have to mention that the Tyler Hamilton incident really has ruined my trust in the word of cyclists who say they aren't doping.

I wouldn't put too much stock in a Dr's examination... Fuentes was responsible for proving a bunch of cyclists had such a condition and Dr. Luis Hernandez doesn't seem much more reputable. The fact that he seems to specialize is such cases and has apparently never had a rider he could not find or fabricate an endogenous explanation for kinda speaks for itself in my opinion.


What I don't understand is why anyone really cares? Did they think that Operation Puerto completely cleaned up the TdF this year? Are they under the impression that the competition Landis beat was clean? The only suprise to me is that he messed up and was caught.

Assuming he did cheat. Which we don't know yet.

We will never Know. As it stands it's very likely he was doping If the B test fails too I think we can say with reasonable certainty that he was. If you are seriously opposed to doping(and I assume you are since you refer to it as cheating) and want to eliminate it then you should be in favor of weakening the standards required to deem someone guilty rather then strengthening them. A rent-a-docs note should not be enough to excuse a rider. Look at how many people in Operation Puerto had never failed a test. Even if some of them where only mistakes I think its safe to say that testing provides alot more false negatives then positives.

I know a messenger who smoked rock once before an alleycat to "go well fast mate." He got lost on the first checkpoint.

SI says that people who have higher-than-average testosterone ALWAYS have higher than average testosterone. It's not a spontaneous occurrence. We may never get a definite answer on this matter, but that's something interesting.

I read in the SI article (before all this came out) that when he caught the breakaway on stage 17 he said that he would gift the stage to anyone who helped him.

I want to believe he didnt do it just as much as the next guy but it reallly doesn't look to good to me.

Yup. Sounds reasonable to me. I'm guessing that he was tested several times before and during the Tour, yet the only positive was the one taken after that miraculous win. Natural causes? Come on...

The strange part is that testosterone is pretty useless stuff for a roadie to use, esp. during the race, cuz most of its effects come out a good couple of days later. My buddy who is in medical school says that it does get you all worked up and maybe less prone to feel pain and fatigue overnight, though... Which is just what Floyd needed. Plus he sure did look freakishly aggressive when he crossed the line. He had a decidedly angry face as he came in, and shoved away a reporter who wanted to ask him a question.


Of course, pretty much the whole field takes all sorts of stuff on the Tour AFAIK. It seems that FL did it in a lot dumber way than most of the others.


One news source says he could be the second overall winner ever to be disqualified after the race. Guess what the first one, Maurice Garin did during the very first TdF in 1903 that got him disco'd...













He covered part of the race distance on a train!

freefloydlandis.blogspot.com is saying that the reason it did come up historically is that they recently reduced the ratio from 6:1 to 4:1 and that F'Landis tested in the 5ish:1 range. If he had, none of the previous, anonymized tests would have been flagged.

I know it's just some random blogger, but he has more coherent information up than any other place I've seen - despite his clear biases.

well spoted. he just tested positive today

I'm not seriously opposed to doping. I only used the word "cheating" since it gets the point across. People are going to bend the rules in any competative event. Its been the driving force (no pun intended) behind motor racing development since 1903. I'm just bummed because I was pulling for floyd during the race and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, and such.

On a side note, my girlfriend just took the BAR exam and said she got herself through it by thinking "if floyd can race for 20 days on a dead hip, I can make it through a 3 day test." Shes really bummed about this.

damn, i'm pulling hard for floyd... but... after reading his interview on larry king on the velonews page, i swear to god it's the same quotes cut-and-pasted from tyler hamilton's case as it developed 2 years ago. this is breaking my heart. seriously. maybe it does take junk to get through a tour on a broken collarbone or a bum hip... or maybe the uci is ptfo at the usa... i really want some resolution. how frigging long does it take to run the B test? it's not like they're making wine out of it or anything...

I read it would be (or should be) three months before they complete all tests, and according to that WADA website, they are NOT supposed to even release any results or talk about it until all the tests are complete- probably for this very reason that we're seeing now. Floyd is being crucified before they can even perform tests and compare to past tests and the tests he will have to take to compare to the positive sample. Of course, this is probably what that lab in France wanted to begin with. Even if Floyd is found innocent, his image, reputation, and Tour win will always be tainted, and I think that was the real objective of the leak. Mission accomplished!

Koffee

It could be argued that it is appropriate for a suspected cheat to be suspended immediately that any suspisions come to light. It certainly would be innapropriate for flandis to continue to compete until this is resolved. He was about to start another race, so his immediate suspension was the correct decision.

Once a rider is suspended the rest of the story needs to be told, and it was.

Coffee, how do you feel about all the innocent riders that were not allowed to start the tdf? None of them had given a positive test result.

The idea that "the French" are plotting against flandis, just because he is an American is truly rediculous, and any "American" that feels that way should be ashamed.

Btw, why is this thread in "singlespeed and fixed gear" anyway? Shouldn't a moderator close this thread instead of perpetuating it?

baby...

Invalid analogy. So you're saying doping/bending the rules is de facto bike racing? Surely you can't be suggesting this. You soup up the racecar as much as you can within regulations but you don't ****ing dope the driver to make him drive faster laps. Ergo, you soup up the bike not the rider.

On a bike, the rider is the engine. And a brief study of the history of NASCAR will tell you that a great deal of the development is outside of the rules. The first guy to use a seat belt was accused of cheating. I'm just saying that riders are going to do everything they can to compete at the highest level they can. Specially engineered diets are ok. IV drips of vitamins are ok. Training in controlled oxygen environments is ok. It doesn't take much of a leap to get to injecting extra red blood cells. There is a large grey area between whats ok and what isn't. As methods advance, the difference between right and wrong is blurred. I say let they do whatever the hell they want. If they go to far, they shorten their career, and pay for their mistakes. If it comes down to who can handle the most performance enhancers before their heart explodes, so be it.

As much as I hate the french for everything they've done to Lance, I really don't think there's an anti-american conspiracy going on here.

Because it is. If I had to move out every thread that truly wasn't a ss/fixie thread, we'd have some slim pickins left. If fixies and ss'ers are talking about road cycling, I'm delighted, personally.

Koffee

Mod