Flickr user: missingsaddle

He knows his male hormones, does our Francie.

Last year’s winner of the Tour De France, Floyd Landis, has been busy trying to drum up support over doping allegations in relation to his controversial triumph. Landis can be seen as one of the lucky cyclists in the past few years making a decent amount of money as far as cyclists go. But with expected costs of up to $2 million for his defence hearing, he’s having to trail America doing information/benefit sessions to gain as many mighty dollars as he can.

I know of a guy who recently attended one of these sessions in New York, and his e-mail on the subject piqued my interest in the whole case. He met Landis on the night and said how he took the time to talk with just about everybody in the place (2-300 people). On the night an auction took place to raise funds and one of the more interesting items sold was a signed Jack Daniels bottle (Landis notoriously blamed Jack Daniels as a potential reason for the test result) which went for over $350.

Initially I, like many, was convinced that Landis had taken banned substances during his Tour win. His machine-like performance on stage 17 was the trigger for all the controversy. He somehow recovered from a disaster in the saddle the previous day to claw his way back into contention with a virtuoso performance in the French Alps.

Now, however, I’m beginning to side with Landis’s claims of innocence.

Some interesting info from his defence team:

... WADA contamination rule (samples not collected under sterile conditions): "The concentration of free testosterone and/or epitestosterone in the specimen is not to exceed 5% of the respective glucuroconjugates." Ratio = 7.7% in this case. Clearly contaminated ...


Radically different results from the same sample further emphasised this point. Testosterone/Epitestosterone ratio can't exceed 4:1. The ratio quoted by WADA was 11.4:1, obviously much higher. However, in four tests on the same sample the ratio increased, going from 4.1 to 11.4. Supposedly, contamination can cause the epitestosterone to deteriorate which would cause the T:E ratio to increase. If that's the case, then even the first test was likely higher than it would have been if they tested it immediately after he finished. What would it have been? Who knows, but definitely below 4. Also, his testosterone levels were normal (epi-T was low, causing the high ratio), further negating the contention that he took testosterone before the stage.


WADA isn't required to, and won't, provide Floyd's team with his six other test results from other days. These were all normal ratios. A couple were taken after this test too, further lending credence to the fact that he didn't take testosterone before stage 17, otherwise it surely would have shown up? How can someone mount a defence if they don't have all the information the prosecution has?

tags:landis

Published by Colm.